


Strike Team Delta: Basic Training

by ClaraxBarton



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Black Widow - Freeform, Canon Typical Violence, Hawkeye - Freeform, Origin Story, Strike Team Delta, bromance of the ages, pre-avengers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-05-28 19:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15055937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: 2003:Clint Barton makes a different call. Instead of following his orders to kill the Black Widow, he offers her a choice and a chance.A chance that changes both their lives.The origin of STRIKE Team Delta





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvsanime02](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/gifts), [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/gifts).



**Vienna**

**March 2003**

 

So this was it.

 

This was how she would die.

 

Natasha looked over the edge of the roof. The nearest building was twenty meters away and taller - there was no way she could escape.

 

With a sigh, she turned around to face the end.

 

Clint Barton stared her down, his cool gaze implacable, his hands sure as they gripped his bow, the arrow already mocked and ready.

 

He kept walking towards her.

 

“Put down the gun, Natasha. I’m under orders to kill you.”

 

This close, she wasn’t sure it would be a kill shot. With Clint less than a yard away, it wasn’t a matter of accuracy - with him, it was never a matter of accuracy - but even with his impressive draw, she didn’t think he would be able to put the arrow through her sternum.

 

He could go for the carotid.

 

She shook her hair back from her neck, to give him a better shot.

 

He frowned, but otherwise didn’t move.

 

She swallowed and then licked her lips. Her last words.

 

Hawkeye would remember them, would hopefully remember her.

 

“Take the shot. Wouldn’t want to ruin your perfect record.”

 

Those felt like the wrong words, felt like too much and not enough of herself and-

 

Clint lowered the bow, arms relaxing and string no longer taut.

 

“What?” He looked absolutely mystified.

 

“If I don’t kill you, they kill me. Take the shot. You’ll make it quicker than they will.”

 

He stared at her for a full minute. Another. And then he tossed down his bow. She had never seen him so careless with a weapon before. Especially not that one.

 

Clint turned his back on her, giving her every opportunity to put a knife in it. He ran his hands through his short hair, setting the blond strands to chaos, and then turned back to her.

 

He looked furious.

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded, looking genuinely enraged with her. It was a new expression.

 

Clint’s face was ridiculously expressive. She had first met him eight years ago when they had been after the same target, and had spent the last five years stalking him. Natasha considered herself to be reasonably well versed in his body language. She had seen him upset before, had seen his cheeks flushed and his breathing heavy, and heard him swear in more languages than she’d thought he knew.

 

But  _ this _ was not that.

 

“You can’t- you can’t just fucking give up, Natasha!”

 

She sighed. She should have expected this. He took injured strays home and nursed them back to life. She put a bullet in their skulls to save them the pain.

 

Natasha rose to her feet and closed the space between them. He was still so much larger than her. Always had been. She remembered the first time they had met. Her first assignment. She had been eleven, and bristling with eagerness to succeed and prove her worth to her handlers. He had been gangly and tall, but still broad-shouldered, and his hair a tragedy. She had felt so small that day.

 

She felt even smaller today.

 

She put her palm on the center of his chest.

 

“Tag. You’re it.”

 

There. Those were good last words. That was what she wanted him to remember.

 

Clint grabbed her hand before she could pull it away, trapping her small hand in his, lacing their fingers together.

 

His pale blue eyes were painfully earnest as they studied her face.

 

He licked his lips, and then spoke.

 

“Do you trust me?”


	2. Chapter 2

 

**2003**

 

It was 100% Nat’s fault that they got saddled with the moniker  _ SHRIEK _ Team Delta.

 

She disagreed - said that it was, in fact, 100% Clint’s fault - but he figured that it was statistically impossible for her to be right all of the time, so this was the one time she was wrong. It wasn’t his fault. It was 100% her fault.

 

Okay. Maybe it was 5% his fault.  Maybe.

 

After Clint’s brilliant marketing and promotional skills convinced Nat to switch sides and join SHIELD instead of Clint putting an arrow in her, Clint had figured he would get a promotion. Okay, he figured he’d get a dressing down for disobeying direct orders, and maybe one of those annoying yellow forms to fill out and more mandated therapy time to find creative ways to skip. But still, he hadn’t expected the punishment that Fury had decided to dole out to be so severe.

 

Fort Benning.

 

He knew of it, in the passing way that he knew about most military installations because despite what Coulson muttered about doubting Clint’s abilities to read, Clint could and did read. And that sometimes extended to briefing intel, and hey, he’d actually dated a guy who did basic out of Fort Benning.

 

Dating as in they’d gone on two dates because the sex had been really good the first night and the new Star Wars movie was out and G.I. Joe asked Clint to go see it with him. The movie had been awful, but flirting over popcorn and the sex after had been great. First real date Clint had ever been on. Only real date Clint had been on.

 

The next day Clint had left for his next gig, and that had been that. He sometimes wondered what had happened to G.I. Joe.

 

He wondered a hell of a lot less when he and Nat stepped off the helicopter at Fort Benning and were met by Agent Brown.

 

The man was dressed in the black SHIELD service uniform, and his dark gaze swept over the pair of them with a sneer already on his face. And then he did a double-take over Clint.

 

Apparently, G.I. Joe, Clint later learned when Nat shoved her laptop in front of his face after she did some casual snooping, was Joe Brown. Former Army Special Forces. Recruited by SHIELD. Now instructor for SHIELD’s STRIKEAT (Special Tactical Reserve for International Key Emergencies Agent Training) program, embedded in Fort Benning.

 

Clint kind of had to wonder about a guy who would go back to a place like this voluntarily.

 

Then again, maybe G.I. Joe was here as much against his will as Clint and Natasha were.

 

When Clint had been recruited by SHIELD, he hadn’t had to go through this - Coulson and Fury had signed a lot of paperwork, and Hill had apparently made the right people piss themselves, and Clint had been cleared for duty within seventy-two hours of his apprehension/recruitment. Even after spectacularly failing his psych evaluation.

 

But Nat…

 

Clint had spent an hour in a room with Coulson, Hill and Fury arguing about her. Hill thought this was some kind of long-con the Black Widow was pulling. Coulson thought she was only loyal to Clint, and would turn on the rest of them in a heartbeat. Clint thought they were all dumb and he was bored, so he said something really, really, really stupid.

 

_ Put her to the test _ .

 

Fury had done that thing where his lips kind of curved - it wasn’t a smile or a smirk or a sneer, but something way scarier-  and Clint had known he was fucked.

 

_ STRIKE Team Delta will report for training at Fort Benning _ .

 

Fury’s words had seemed apropos of nothing. Clint didn’t know who or what STRIKE Team Delta was.

 

But then Coulson rolled his eyes at Clint’s look of confusion, and demanded to know if he  _ ever _ checked his email.

 

Clint said of course he did - statistically speaking, those Lottery Winner emails couldn’t  _ all _ be fake, and he kind of liked the idea of marrying a Nigerian prince.

 

Turned out that he had overlooked the email with the boring subject line  **STRIKE TEAM DELTA.**

 

Which, Hill said with a sigh that sounded like she had lost patience with Clint the first time she laid eyes on him, was Clint and Nat.

 

Which meant they were going to Fort Benning for  _ training, _ because Fury thought it would be a great test to see if Nat was legit. And, Clint was sure, as punishment for disobeying orders to kill Black Widow.

 

Which meant Clint got to meet G.I. Joe. Again.

 

Agent Brown took his second look at Clint, lips going tight and dark eyes flashing, and told both of them to move their asses, he had places to be.

 

“Droids to find?” Clint suggested.

 

Agent Brown’s eyes flicked to him for the briefest of moments, and then he turned on his heel.

 

Time, it appeared, did not make the heart grow fonder.

 

-o-

 

Clint had never had any sort of formal schooling. Had never really had much  _ informal _ schooling, for that matter, so when they were taken to the Admin building and told to provide paperwork and documentation, he laughed in their faces.

 

Nat just arched one perfect eyebrow.

 

Agent Brown had to call Coulson, who smoothed the way, and then they were off to the quartermaster.

 

STRIKEAT was supposed to take twelve weeks, which sounded like about eleven weeks longer than the training Clint was willing to sit still for. 

 

STRIKE Team Delta would apparently be joining up with an existing STRIKEAT class, already two weeks into their course. 

 

“Is there a different class - maybe at the nine or ten or twelve week point - we could join instead?” Clint had to ask Agent Brown.

 

Silence was his only answer. That, and another of Nat’s raised brows.

 

They were issued all kinds of crap from notebooks to socks to something that the quartermaster called a laundry bag, but Clint was pretty sure he could turn into a weapon. Because he wasn’t going to use it for anything else. A slanted look at Nat as their arms were loaded with crap had him looking into a face of lifeless boredom.

 

If she were any other nineteen-year-old, she’d just be bored and understandably so. But Clint had been keeping tabs on the kid for years, had had more than a few close encounters with her, and he knew that  _ that _ expression wasn’t a mirror of his own irritation at having to sit through this shit. She was thinking and planning, and she was  _ not _ there with him.

 

_ Fuck _ . If Nat bugged out on him, then Coulson would never let him live it down, and they’d probably make sure to send someone after her who  _ would _ kill her next time.

 

“Hey,” Clint put on his best ‘the world loves me, you just don’t know it yet’ smirk and winked at the quartermaster, “any chance this stuff comes in purple? Black and grey’s  _ fine _ , but guy like me… I look best in purple. Nat, what color do you want?”

 

She didn’t respond, which didn’t surprise him. The quartermaster glared, which also didn’t surprise him.

But Agent Brown, their unhappy shadow, spoke up. 

 

“Oddly enough, no one cares what you want, Agent Barton.”

 

_ Damn _ . That was the voice of ‘the world hates you, and I’m here to show you how much’.

 

Nat didn’t move a single muscle, but her entire body and face shifted from listlessness to attentive, ready to fight or flee.

 

“You care what I want, right, kiddo?” Clint nudged her with his shoulder.

 

She spared him a glare.

 

Glaring was good. Glaring with  _ here _ .

 

Of course, having someone who had been trained for as long as she could remember to be a world class assassin and who had gotten herself on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar as an international threat at the tender age of fourteen glare at him wasn’t  _ smart _ . 

 

But no one had ever accused Clint of being smart.

 

-o-

Tragically, they had missed day one of STRIKEAT training, which meant they had missed getting yelled at and formed into three teams - Alpha, Bravo and Charlie - and made to do PT testing and the Trench Run.

 

It wasn’t tragic at all, in Clint’s mind. It meant that he and Nat got assigned their own barracks - score one for STRIKE Team Delta - and it meant they hadn’t had to go through whatever bullshit the PT testing and whatever the hell the Trench Run was.

 

That’s what he had assumed.

 

The next morning at 0600, as Clint winced into the face shouting into his own just inches away and his coffee-deprived brain struggled to remember what  _ year _ it was, Clint thought there was probably a saying about assuming that applied to his current situation.

 

Clint and Nat were shouted into getting out of bed, getting dressed and running to the parade ground. Clint was still tucking in his shirt when he saw the 26 agents standing in neat formation, arms folded at the smalls of their backs, glaring into the middle distance.

 

Aw. That was cute. Military formations. 

 

He was pretty sure that Agent Shoutyface was telling him to fall in, and Nat, looking unfairly fresh-faced and supremely unconcerned, took up an impressively rigid posture beside the farthest left column of agents.

 

Clint finished tucking in his shirt and strolled into place beside her.

 

Shoutyface shoved him into place behind her instead, and Clint shrugged.

 

“Class, we have two new recruits joining us today.” It was Agent Brown, dressed in a tight black t-shirt with the STRIKE logo above his left breast and black tactical pants tucked into black boots that were  _ definitely _ a good look on him as far as Clint was concerned.

 

“Agents Barton and Romanoff will be picking up with us today. But their presence means we need to adjust our training regime.”

 

Oh, that sounded exciting. It sounded like he and Nat were being isolated and targeted even more than their own billet and late arrival would do.

 

“No need to go to the trouble,” Clint spoke up, waving the thought away with his hand. “We’re quick learners.”

 

There was absolute silence.

 

Clint was positive he heard crickets chirping. 

 

“Class. Drop and give me 100 push-ups.” Brown said it while he looked directly at Clint.

 

Clint groaned. Push-ups were boring. 

 

He started to get down to his knees, but Brown’s voice carried over the shuffle of everyone getting down on the dirt.

 

“Not you, Agent Barton. You can remain standing while the  _ class _ does your exercise.”

 

Right. 

 

In front of him, Nat was completing the push-ups without complaint, her clear voice calling out the count along with the rest of the class. 

 

He was starting to wonder if this whole training thing was about  _ her _ or about  _ him _ .

 

Clint was proud of the class when the last agent called out 100 three minutes after everyone had started. He thought about clapping for the class, but even  _ he _ sometimes decided his actions were a bad idea.

 

Everyone rose to their feet.

 

“As I was saying before your break,” Brown continued, and Clint snorted, “we’ll begin today with Barton and Romanoff doing their PT testing and the Trench Run. Barring any more breaks, we will then return to our usual schedule. Understood?”

 

There was a chorus of ‘yessirs’ that didn’t quite drown out Clint’s ‘okay.’

 

-o-

 

PT Testing. Clint had never done that. He was really starting to rethink this whole reformed vigilante thing. When he had decided to use his questionable skills set to take out some human scum, he hadn’t had to do any kind of running or rope pulling or crawling under razor wire or...monkey bars? Seriously. Running. So much running. Organized military organizations sucked. A lot.

 

Nat beat him. Which wasn’t surprising, because she was a fucking  _ infant _ full of energy. But he was pretty sure his score was still respectable. Especially if the glares from their assembled classmates were any indication.

 

After the way Brown had set things up, Clint was fairly certain that  _ success _ on Clint’s terms meant an exponential growth of homicidal feelings towards him from his classmates.

 

That, at least, was a feeling he was used to.

 

-o-

 

The Trench Run was… actually kind of fun. Not that Clint would ever admit to that, even on pain of death. Well. Maybe he would after a few beers.

 

Situated across the base - more running, which wasn’t in any way fun at  _ all _ \- the Trench was a 100-yard-long concrete corridor, twenty feet wide, with walls that same height. It was filled with shooting targets, arranged between obstacles and sporadic cover. And it was filled with shooting  _ positions _ in and on the wall. The goal was to make it from one end to the other, as fast as possible, taking out as many threats as possible, while not killing any bystanders and not getting tagged by any of the shooters arranged along the walls.

 

He actually grinned as Brown explained it, and the other agents and instructors took positions along the walls.

 

“Which one of you wants to go first?” Brown asked with an air of supreme magnanimity. 

 

“I gotta run back to the barracks and get my bow,” Clint shrugged. “Nat can-”

 

“Agent Barton, STRIKE agents do not use a bow and arrow. You aren’t Robin Hood. You’ll use the standard issue sidearm that everyone else does.”

 

“But… I’m Hawkeye. That’s my thing. I… you know…” Clint mimed shooting arrows.

 

Brown didn’t look impressed.

 

“She’s Black Widow. Am I supposed to let her go collect spiders to unleash on the course?”

 

“No. She’d never meet the time requirements if- oh. I see. Haha.”

 

Nat was doing that thing where she was looking at Clint with an absolutely blank expression that said ‘how did you manage to stay alive for 28 years?’

 

Clint sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He really hoped he could get some coffee after this. He wondered, if they kicked him out, if he could just leave base and go find a diner and-

 

“Barton. You first.” Brown had clearly lost even the pretense of patience.

 

He picked up the gun laid out on the table just in front of the  _ start _ of the Trench. There was a box of ammunition beside it. The gun, an H&K Mark 23, was one Clint had used before, but didn’t really like. Not as much as his  _ bow _ . He opened the box of ammo.

 

Live rounds. Wow. That made this a lot more fun. Unless-

 

“Do the shooters also have live rounds?” Clint had to ask. When they said you had to make it through to the other end  _ alive, _ maybe they really meant it. He wouldn’t have thought that was the way SHIELD operated. But he had just been tasked with killing a 19-year-old, and then reprimanded for turning her instead.

 

“Unfortunately, no.” Brown’s eyes were hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses, but Clint didn’t need to see his eyes to know he had rolled his eyes. Clint could  _ hear _ eye rolls.

 

He loaded up on magazines.

 

“Kiss for good luck?” he asked.

 

Nat made a face at him, and crossed her arms.

 

“Stop stalling, old man. We both know I’m going to kick your ass no matter what.”

 

“I was  _ talking _ to Agent Brown, kiddo.”

 

“Barton.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“The clock started five seconds ago.”

 

-o-

 

Clint propped his elbow on Nat’s shoulder and sipped from his coffee.

 

She squirmed out from under him, and continued on in the line for food in the mess hall. 

 

As soon as they had been released for food, Clint had made a beeline for the coffee, and then regrouped with Nat in line, cutting quite a bit of their class in the process. The muttering made a nice soundtrack for his first and well-deserved dose of caffeine.

 

They had both made it to the end of the Trench alive.  _ Duh _ . And neither had shot a friendly. Also duh. But Clint had racked up one more kill than Nat, and if she hadn’t realized he would never let her live that down, then she really didn’t know him as well as she thought she did. And despite his five second handicap, he had actually been faster than her, and only ten seconds off the best Trench time. Not bad for a first run. Or for an old man.

 

“Don’t worry,” he said as he dumped a bunch of tannish-brownish something on his plate. Mashed potatoes? “You’re young. And now that you’re my sidekick, I can whip you into shape.”

 

Nat’s shoulders tensed, and Clint mentally kicked himself.  _ Whipped into shape _ wasn’t something he should joke with a survivor of the Red Room about.

 

Fortunately, someone  _ literally _ kicked Clint in that moment. He pitched forward and stared in opened-mouth horror as he knocked over his own coffee and it soaked into the thing on his plate.

 

He turned to glare at the guy about to be added to his  _ Kill Without Question _ list. Okay. Maybe he’d add an asterisk beside the guy’s name and put him on the bottom of it, but  _ still, _ it was Clint’s first chance at caffeine and this fucking-

 

God. This fucking gorgeous fucking god had kicked him. Just a bit taller than Clint, with wide shoulders and a trim waist and a chest that looked damn fine in his black t-shirt, and cheekbones and a jaw that looked like Clint might cut his hand on them.

 

“Hi,” Clint said, and pulled his most flirtatious grin out.

 

Tall, dark and angular didn't seem immediately won over.

 

“I’m Clint.” He extended his hand, and the other man glared at him for a moment before taking it.

 

“Brock Rumlow.” The name was said as a growl, and as much as Clint might think the name Brock was deeply unfortunate, the growl was hot. 

 

“Brock,” Clint teased his index finger over the other man’s wrist.

 

Rumlow’s eyes flared wide, and then narrowed. His grip on Clint’s hand tightened.

 

“Agent Rumlow,” Clint purred, kind of into Rumlow’s clear need to assert his alpha-male status by exerting an iron grip on Clint’s hand.

 

“Agent Barton,” he growled. “I never got the chance to thank you for the extra workouts this morning.”

 

Aside from the first ‘break’ Clint had earned for the class, after the Trench Run, Clint had complained about having to run  _ back _ to the parade ground. As a result, all of the other agents had had to run the distance there and back four times. Even Nat looked a little pissed off after that one.

 

“Well, you look like you’re in great shape - I’m glad to help keep up with that.” Clint clapped a hand over one of Rumlow’s bulging biceps. Not, he had to admit, as nice as his own, but Clint wasn’t enough of a narcissist for that to matter. Too much. “Anytime you want to schedule a private work-out, just let me know.”

 

He threw in another wink, and Rumlow dropped his hand like he’d been burned by it.

 

“You’re fucking queer?” he sneered.

 

Clint frowned. Had that… not been obvious?

 

He looked over at Nat and arched an eyebrow. There was no way he was putting off hetero vibes, was he?

 

Nat’s blank expression clearly said ‘this is the most entertainment I’ve had since that time I watched you swim through a canal in Venice to save a puppy.’

 

“Yeah,” he said, turning back to Rumlow. “Only thing straight about me is my shot.” He mimed shooting an arrow.

 

“Then get this through your skull, you two don’t belong here. We know all about you, Hawkeye - and your little Russian friend. The two of you might as well pack your bags. You’re going to wash out in a week - if there’s anything of you left to wash.”

 

The growl went really well with the threats.

 

Clint sighed. It would have been better to hear the growl telling Clint was a glorious lay he was.

 

Oh well. He could still fantasize about it.

 

“You Americans are so cute,” Nat said in Russian, a tight, superior little smile on her face.

 

Rumlow clearly knew Russian, and so did some of the agents closest to them. The tension in the room was suddenly thicker than the goop on Clint’s plate.

 

“But I’m the cutest, right?” Clint responded in Russian. He smirked and picked up his tray, following Nat down the line and completely ignoring the other agents.

 

“I thought you didn’t like it when I lied to you.” She sent him another of those superior little smiles, and he feigned taking a shot to the heart.

 

_ “Fucking fairy and his pet fucking double agent _ ,” Clint heard someone mutter behind them. 

 

Nat’s shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly.

 

“Okay. But I’m the second cutest, right?”

 

-o-

 

That night, Clint actually crawled into his bed. He didn’t think he had ever been this tired. Ever.

 

So. Much. Running.

 

After the disaster that had been optimistically called ‘lunch’, the agents had been herded into a lecture hall, and the instructors had done their level best to bore Clint into returning to a life of crime.

 

Ninety minutes of lecture about tactical threat assessment.

 

And then a two-mile run.

 

Well. Two miles for Clint.

 

Four for the rest of the class.

 

And then another lecture, something to do with history.

 

And then dinner, which was marginally less awful than lunch, since Clint only went for coffee and skipped the goop.

 

And then it was back to the Trench. 

 

Theoretically, each agent had to complete the run three times, as a beginning, middle and end assessment. But agents could schedule another run whenever they wanted, after hours. The shooters who filled the positions along the wall were volunteers from the other agents, instructors and, Clint learned as he stationed himself to lay flat on the top of the wall three-quarters of the way down the Trench and set up his airsoft rifle, members of the Army also stationed at Fort Benning. 

 

There wasn’t much overlap with the grunts, but apparently the Trench was something everyone got to play on.

 

And Rumlow had decided he wanted to win back the current class high score that Clint had just that morning claimed for himself.

 

Clint let him get almost halfway through the course, because there was no reason to waste the chance to run recon on the guy who clearly thought himself a threat to Clint and Nat.

 

He lined up the shot, debating whether to go for the dick or the face.

 

“High or low?” he called out to Nat, who was stationed a dozen yards down.

 

“You go high,” she called back.

 

He grinned and sighted down the scope, took in a breath, let it out and-

 

A puff of green exploded on Rumlow’s face at the exact same time that pink blossomed over his groin. He staggered and then went down, clutching his balls and groaning loud enough to be heard by most of the class.

 

Another point to STRIKE Team Delta.

 

Still, even with the unwavering confidence that he and Nat were about 20,000 leagues out of anyone else’s league, Clint felt  _ old _ as he stretched out on his bed that night.

 

With the lights out and only the soft, steady breathing of Nat for company, Clint almost felt comfortable.

 

“Hey, Nat?”

 

“Fourth cutest. Let it drop, Clint.”

 

He heard sheets rustle, and imagined she was rolling over.

 

“Wait. What?  _ Fourth _ ? Who the hell are the three Americans cuter than me?”

 

“Captain America.”

 

“Okay, but he’s dead.”

 

“Still cuter.”

 

“I knew you were weird, Romanoff, but necrophilia? Who else?”

 

“Britney Spears.”

 

Clint gasped in delight and rolled over himself, catching Nat’s clear gaze in the low light.

 

“You listened to the mixtape I made you!”

 

She didn’t respond.

 

“Oops, I did it again…” he started to sing.

 

“I played with your heart,” she sang back to him, almost too low to hear.

 

“Got lost in the game,” they sang together. “Oh baby, baby. Oops, you think I’m in love. That I’m sent from above.” They paused, and then in perfect synchronicity, “I’m not that innocent.”

 

Clint grinned into the darkness until Nat muttered something about senile dogs in Russian.

 

“Hey, Nat?”

 

“Denzel Washington.”

 

“Why’d you let me win the Trench Run today?”

 

She was silent for a moment before responding.

 

“Strategy.” He could  _ hear  _ her smiling, and knew she was happy that he had figured it out. He wasn’t an idiot. He’d known that she let him win.

 

“Like the kind of strategy where you check out all of my best moves and then use them to your advantage to wreck my scores?”

 

“Like the kind of strategy where I watch your six.”

 

He’d known that too.

 

-o-


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at things from Natasha's POV

STRIKEAT was disarmingly similar and disappointingly different than her Red Room training.

 

It left Natasha feeling ill at ease, wondering how many layers deep each test went, wondering what the instructors actually wanted from her.

 

She also wondered how long it would take Clint to realize that this was a test for him as much, if not more, than it was for  _ her _ . 

 

The first week of training, she had thought he knew - had thought he was acting blustery and picking ridiculous fights and doing his level best to turn not just their entire  _ class _ against them, but the entire base, as a way to give SHIELD the finger for saddling him with not just a partner, but also trying to squish him into the system.

 

But by the second week, when Natasha had found her stride and managed to make herself mostly unremarkable unless Clint was by her side, she realized that he had no idea. He really thought that by deflecting the ire and attention of SHIELD, their instructors and their class onto himself, he was making it easier for  _ her _ .

 

For someone as brilliant as he was, Clint was an incredibly dense idiot.

 

He was also the most tragic human Natasha had encountered.

 

It was day seventeen of their training, and it was 0601. The entire class stood on the parade ground, doing jumping jacks while waiting for Clint to show up. 

 

She had seen him go into the head at 0530, because she had dragged him out of bed and  _ shoved _ him into it. There was every chance he had fallen asleep in there, but he hadn’t done that since day eleven.

 

0605

 

0610

 

Natasha wondered if she needed to start becoming curious.

 

0615

 

She couldn’t help but notice that Rumlow and his band of testosterone-riddled buddies were looking ridiculously smug.

 

Natasha sighed.

 

Clint was such an idiot.

 

0620 

 

He finally made an appearance. 

 

Natasha stared, as did everyone else.

 

Clint strolled onto the parade ground wearing nothing but his boots.  _ Nothing _ .

 

“Agent Barton!” Brown barked from the front as Clint settled in just behind Natasha.

 

“Morning, Agent Brown,” Clint called back cheerfully. 

 

“Agent Barton,  _ where _ are your clothes?” Brown’s cheeks were an interesting shade that Natasha didn’t think could be entirely blamed on the sun he had been getting recently. She wondered if Clint realized that his old fling was still hung up on him. Probably not. Clint was only attracted to trainwrecks.

 

Rumlow muttered something under his breath that had a few other agents snickering.

 

_ Speaking of trainwrecks _ …

 

“Gone. Every stitch you assigned me.”

 

“You lost  _ all _ of your clothes?” Brown sounded somewhere between exasperated and resigned.

 

“Seems that way. But I found some sunblock, so I’m good to go.”

 

Natasha was fairly certain she was one of the only training agents who knew what the scheduled activities were for the day, because so far the security flags she had established when hacking into the SHIELD database hadn’t shown anyone else snooping.

 

So she winced in anticipation.

 

Brown took a long, considering glance over Clint, and then smirked.

 

“As you wish, Agent Barton. Class, today you’re going on a field trip.”

 

There was absolutely zero enthusiasm from the agents at this news. Any field trip that a naked Clint could be taken along on wasn’t going to be something that  _ anyone _ enjoyed. 

 

Brown looked at the watch on his wrist.

 

“Beginning at 0700, and lasting until you make it back or call for evac, each team will be tasked with recovering an asset and returning them to this location. If the asset becomes aware of your approach, or your mission is discovered, you fail the exercise. Once you have the asset in custody, they will not  _ actively _ attempt to sabotage your mission, but if your mission is discovered in the course of transporting your asset here, you fail the exercise. If you fail to return to the parade ground with your asset intact  _ first _ , then you fail the exercise. If you create any casualties, you fail the exercise. If you damage any property, you fail the exercise. Those are the ground rules. Everything else is allowed. First place or no place, ladies.”

 

Natasha flicked a glance at the actual  _ ladies _ in the training class besides herself. Katarina Martinez, who had the unfortunate luck of being on Team Alpha with Rumlow, and Shannon Lawrence, who was on Team Charlie. Neither woman had approached her, and she certainly hadn’t approached them. But they, like her, didn’t bother to refrain from rolling their eyes at their male counterparts being called ladies.

 

Agent Grier, who Clint still insisted on calling Shoutyface, passed out burn folders with their mission intel.

 

Natasha accepted theirs.

 

Brown stared at his watch.

 

“And mission is a  _ go _ ,” he called out.

 

-o-

 

Natasha almost had fun.

 

The closest thing she had had to fun since…

 

Madrid?

 

Their asset turned out to be Command Sergeant Oscar Conti. That was all the burn envelope revealed. Fortunately, they didn’t have to waste any time looking up who he was. Natasha had already memorized the command structure of the personnel stationed at Fort Benning, and when she had checked that morning, there had been no staff reorganizations of note.

 

Conti was the Director of Special Forces Recruiting on base. He was middle-aged, still impressively muscular despite the thickening of his midsection, and his dark gaze was hard and unflinching.

 

“Wish we could just kill him instead of haul him around,” Clint muttered, while Natasha looked over the base map again.

 

They were currently holed up in the infirmary, and Clint was raiding the lockers of the nurses for clothes for both himself and Natasha.

 

The idiot even left thank you notes with arrows scribbled on them.

 

“Hauling him around when he’s dead would be more difficult,” Natasha pointed out as she accepted the sleeveless  _ sundress _ and flip-flops that Clint handed her with a grimace.

 

“Sorry,” Clint shrugged. “I tried it on me, but it doesn’t fit. Plus, peach goes better with your hair than mine.”

 

For himself, Clint had chosen jeans, a Budweiser t-shirt that might be as old as Natasha herself was, and a John Deere hat.

 

He handed her a large, bright floral purse that she used to stuff her clothing into.

 

“C’mon, hunnybun,” Clint said in what had to be the worst approximation of a Southern accent Natasha had ever heard, “let’s see if I can get myself recruited by the Army.”

 

It was distressingly easy to lift the ID cards off of the blushing, stammering six and a half foot tall high school senior sitting in the lobby of the recruitment center and filling out his paperwork.

 

Natasha rolled her eyes while Clint purred into the kid’s ear, and whatever he said had the poor guy both curling into himself and leaning closer to Clint as Clint fiddled with a hole in the knee of the guy’s jeans.

 

She had bet him two bags of Cheetos that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off.

 

Not even ninety seconds later, Natasha cursed under her breath.

 

Clint was still whispering in his ear, laughing and looking at him like he was the only thing on the planet that mattered, and the kid  _ definitely _ came in his pants. He hopped up, all anxious energy, completely conflicted about what to do. Clint, of course, stood up and tried to comfort him, but in the end, the kid ran out of the office, red-faced and tugging at his jeans.

 

Clint picked up the papers the kid had abandoned and continued to fill them out, setting the Photo ID, Birth Certificate, Social Security Card, Library Card and Blockbuster Member Cards he had stolen on the chair beside him.

 

Natasha rolled her eyes at the blatant display, and Clint shot her a smug look and held up two fingers.

 

“You’ll get fat,” she mouthed back at him.

 

He looked supremely unconcerned.

 

It took nearly half an hour, but eventually Clint - or Avery Steed III - was called back by a recruitment agent while Natasha continued to sit in the lobby.

 

She waited another five minutes, and then went in search of the bathroom.

 

While she sat in a closed stall and waited to implement the next part of her plan, Natasha couldn’t help but reflect.

 

This entire exercise - partnering her with Clint, sending them off to SHIELD’s elite training, letting her roam around unwatched, treating her just like any other SHIELD agent - it made her spine itch. They couldn’t possibly trust her so easily, not on Clint’s word alone, and his threat to leave SHIELD if they didn’t give her a chance. 

 

_ If _ she was a double agent, or if she had intentions of going rogue, exposing her to all of this - it was either completely reckless, or a finely calculated risk.

 

She had studied Fury, but that didn’t mean she  _ knew _ him. Not the way she knew Clint. Not the way she knew herself. Not the way she knew most of the training agents and the instructors by now. 

 

Fury was an unknown, and she suspected that he always would be. The question was, really, was  _ she _ willing to become known to him? Did she want to gain his trust? Become a pawn for him to move across the board?

 

What was worse, being a pawn for the Red Room or for SHIELD? She wasn’t under any illusions about being good or bad - SHIELD was  _ different _ than the Red Room, but she hadn’t seen any evidence to suggest they were  _ better _ .

 

But they weren’t HYDRA.

 

Maybe-

 

The door to the bathroom squealed on its hinges as it was pushed open, and Nat drew in a deep breath to prepare herself.

 

She waited until the woman was in the stall next to her, and then let out her first soft sob.

 

Crying was a skill that she had mastered early on. But it still felt unnatural to her, still made her stomach twist, and she already hated how puffy and stuffy she would be feeling after this.

 

A few more sobs, and she could sense the tension from the next stall.

 

“Sweetheart, are you okay in there?” The voice was tentative and matronly.

 

“I’m fine,” Natasha choked out between sobs, doing her best to sound as though she wanted to hold herself together.

 

“Oh, sweetheart, you are clearly  _ not _ fine.”

 

The woman finished up in her stall and flushed. Natasha heard her door open, and then the woman was knocking on the door of Natasha’s stall.

 

_ Ew. _ She couldn’t help but think.  _ Wash your hands first. _

 

“Sweetheart, talk to me. It can’t be that bad.”

 

“It’s- it’s just- Avery wants to join the Army - he wants to join the Special Forces, whatever that is, and I came with him today, and all of this- It’s all so scary and so big, and he’s- he’s- They’re going to brainwash him and turn him into a murderer or-”

 

“Oh! Oh,  _ no _ , baby. No, no, no. That’s not what will happen at all, sweetheart. Here. Come out here, and let’s talk properly.”

 

Natasha rose from her seat and flushed the toilet. She opened the door to the stall and made a point of crossing over to the sinks and washing her hands before she picked up a paper towel and started to dab at her cheeks.

 

The woman did  _ not _ take the hint. She smoothed one hand down Natasha’s back, pressing close enough that Natasha could see the uneven lines of her foundation and a few clumps of mascara on her lashes.

 

“Now, baby, why don’t you come sit in my office and let’s talk about this?”

 

“Your- your office? Am I in trouble?”

 

“What? No, no, no! I’m an assistant to the Recruitment Director, Command Sergeant Conti.”

 

_ Bingo _ , Natasha thought. That was even better luck than she had hoped for. That was going to take some time off of this whole process, and she had to fight back a smile at that thought.

 

She allowed herself to be led to the woman’s office - not even an  _ office, _ but the desk in front of Conti’s office - and guided to sit down in a chair.

 

The woman handed her a few tissues and rubbed her back in circles in an attempt to soothe.

 

“Now, dear, let me see if the sergeant can take a few moments to talk to you, hm? Maybe set your mind at ease?”

 

Natasha sniffled and offered a brave nod.

The woman patted her on the head affectionately, and then stepped back.

 

Sucking in a deep, watery breath, Natasha leaned back in her chair to wait again.

 

The woman knocked on the closed door to Conti’s office, and the man offered a brusque, muffled “ _ Enter”. _

 

Natasha listened in on the conversation, hearing Conti’s irritation at having his day interrupted, and wondering why the woman was so eager to help convince Natasha that her boyfriend would be safe. 

 

A moment later, the woman stepped out of Conti’s office and beckoned towards Natasha.

 

She held herself together, sniffling into the tissue, until Conti sat down behind his desk and sighed. The look on his face spoke of supreme discomfort.

 

“What, ah, what seems to be bothering you?”

 

As she sobbed and mumbled hysterically, Natasha made sure to be coherent enough when she said  _ Avery Steed _ . Conti sat through a full five minutes of her sobbing, looking increasingly distressed, until he finally gave up.

 

“Just- just hang on one second.” He held up his hand, and Natasha reigned herself in to hiccuping sobs and nodded her head.

 

Conti picked up the phone and ordered someone to bring Avery Steed-

 

“The third,” Natasha added helpfully.

 

-the third, to his office.

 

Only a minute later, and Clint was escorted into the office - at first looking awestruck, and then annoyed when he spotted Natasha and her blotchy face.

 

“Aw, baby, what are you-” He dropped down to his knees beside her chair and took her hands in his. 

 

“I’m sorry! I’m just so scared and-”

 

The door closed as Clint’s recruiting officer fled in the face of her tears. Conti looked like he desperately wanted to do the same.

 

Natasha silently counted to thirty to make sure the other man didn’t return. When he didn’t, she squeezed Clint’s hands.

 

Together, they stood up, and Conti stared at them in momentary confusion, taking in Natasha’s change in demeanor.

 

“What the- Aw, fuck,” Conti groaned as Clint smirked.

 

“Consider yourself acquired by STRIKE Team Delta, Command Sergeant,” Clint said. He held out his hand.

 

Conti glared at him, and Clint dropped it back down to his side.

 

The middle-aged man looked over Natasha, taking in her tears and attire.

 

“You’re really good,” he said.

 

“I know,” she responded, and then turned to Clint. “Plan A or Plan B?”

 

“Plan B’s more fun.” Clint was smirking again.

 

“Plan A is quicker, and we want to be first.”

 

“Yeah, okay, fine. Efficiency first, like Ma Barton always said.”

 

“Command Sergeant, will you please escort Agent Barton and myself to the parking lot? I don’t think Avery Steed III will finish his recruitment today after all,” Natasha said.

 

“Yeah - oh - if some kid comes back, can you give him these?” Clint handed over the stash of cards he had lifted off of the kid. Natasha couldn’t help but notice that the bright blue and yellow Blockbuster card was not among the pile he dropped on Conti’s desk.

 

Conti gave a long-suffering sigh, but gestured towards the door.

 

“After you two.”

 

He played along as Natasha sobbed and Clint soothed her, walking them all the way out to Clint’s non-existent car.

 

“Alright, where’s your car?” Clint asked once there was no longer a clear line of sight to the recruitment center.

 

Conti arched an eyebrow.

 

“You expect me to drive you back to the STRIKEAT parade ground?”

 

“No, no, too many checkpoints to explain. Nat and I just need a place to change.”

 

Conti looked intrigued, and gestured vaguely towards a red sports car. Natasha wouldn’t have pegged him for the type, and her surprise must have shown.

 

“My wife’s. My truck’s in the shop for repairs and-”

 

“Nah, it’s cool,” Clint clapped him on the back in a consoling manner. “Don’t let Nat’s ‘really?’ look throw you off. She looks that way about everything.”

 

Natasha ignored him, and the trio walked over to the car. Conti unlocked it, and Natasha climbed in first to change back into her STRIKEAT gear.

 

After she had finished, she leaned against the car beside Conti. Clint made no move to climb into the car, and instead started to methodically strip off his clothes.

 

Conti stared.

 

“What-” He abruptly shut his mouth and shook his head, apparently and wisely deciding he didn’t want to know.

 

Clint shed all of his stolen clothes, but hesitated over the hat.

 

“I kinda like it,” he said when Natasha rolled her eyes at him.

 

“I didn’t think you were the type for souvenirs?”

 

He scowled and sighed.

 

“Fine.” He tossed it on the pile of clothes. “Hey, Command Sergeant, mind returning all of these to the hospital once you’re off-duty today?”

 

“Sure. Why not?”

 

Now that Clint was back to wearing nothing except for his boots, the trio started walking towards the copse of trees that isolated the recruitment center from the nearest base road. 

 

Once on the road, they continued to walk in brisk silence.

 

They were passed by a group of enlisted men doing a forced march, every one of whom stared at Clint, who saluted back jauntily, but no one said a word.

 

After walking together for over a mile, they still hadn’t been questioned by any of the passing vehicles or personnel. 

 

Conti sighed.

 

“Out of curiosity, what did Plan B involve?”

 

Clint grinned.

 

“A trip to the bowling alley and the arts and craft shop.”

 

It was clear Conti had  _ no _ idea how that pieced together to get them back to the STRIKEAT parade ground. Natasha wasn’t about to enlighten him if Clint wasn’t.

 

Finally, a Jeep pulled over in front of them, and a man wearing the rank of a captain got out of the driver’s seat and approached them.

 

“Sergeant Conti,” the captain greeted them after their salutes.

 

“Captain Rooker.”

 

“I see you’ve met Agent Barton.”

 

Natasha raised her eyebrows, first at Clint, and then at Rooker.

 

He didn’t seem like Clint’s type - tall, slim and blond-haired, with open, good-natured features. He looked like the kind of guy who idolized Captain America.

 

“Captain,” Clint grinned. He made absolutely no move to cover himself or to show himself off to better advantage.

 

Not Clint’s type, then.

 

“Don’t tell me Agent Barton roped you into a poker game as well, Conti.”

 

Natasha rolled her eyes. Of course.

 

“No, you know I don’t hold with gambling,” Conti growled.

 

“Then, uh… mind if I ask what’s going on?”

 

Conti made no move to answer. He wasn’t supposed to actively attempt to escape or alert anyone to their mission, but Natasha had no hopes of him actively  _ supporting _ their mission either.

 

“Actually, sir, the sergeant discovered Agent Barton and myself trying to…” she sighed and trailed off.

 

“Look, Ken, you  _ know _ there’s like no privacy in the billets. Nat and I were just looking for somewhere cozy and private and-”

 

Rooker held up his hand for silence.

 

“Got it.” He sighed. “Want me to take them back to STRIKEAT for you, Conti?”

 

Conti arched an eyebrow at Natasha, an amused gleam in his eyes.

 

“Yeah,” Clint said immediately. “You don’t need to speak to Agent Brown about this, Sergeant. I promise not to-”

 

“Oh? Brown is back on base? Nevermind. I’m not interfering in that.” Rooker grinned and swept his gaze over Clint’s naked body, shook his head and chuckled. “Enjoy the walk, Sergeant.”

 

He walked back to his Jeep, and the trio was left to continue on.

 

It took them another ten minutes to make it there.

 

Agents Brown, Grier, Thomas and Yang were all sitting around a card table that had been set up.They were playing poker.

 

As they approached, Clint rubbed his hands together. 

 

“Think they’ll deal me in for the next hand?” he asked.

 

Conti muttered something under his breath.

 

“Not if you make a Star Wars reference,” Natasha offered her opinion.

 

Clint nodded, and then grinned and waved when they were spotted.

 

All four men rose from the table, all wearing looks of incredulity.

 

Clint jerked his thumb towards Conti.

 

“This the droid you were looking for?”

 

Brown grimaced.

 

Grier shook hands with Conti.

 

“Sorry about that, Command Sergeant,” he said.

 

Conti shrugged.

 

“It could have been worse. Could have been better, too.”

 

“If you wanted me to walk in front of you, you just had to say so, Sergeant,” Clint grinned.

 

Conti shook his head and rolled his eyes heavenward.

 

“Gentlemen.” He nodded to the STRIKEAT trainers, and then turned on his heel and walked away.

 

Natasha saw him flag down a ride.

 

“Well, we were first, right?” Clint asked.

 

Brown looked pained when he nodded.

 

“Great, gonna give me my clothes back now?” Even though he was still grinning, the tone of Clint’s voice was hard, the tone Natasha had heard him use when a job stopped being fun and he wanted to get it over with  _ now _ .

 

There was a moment of sharp, silent tension between the six of them.

 

“Told you he’d still do it naked,” Yang finally muttered, breaking the moment. “You idiots owe me $75.”

 

“Your clothes are back in your barracks,” Grier informed Clint. “Please put them to good use.”

 

Clint rubbed one hand along his jaw.

 

“I dunno. Seems a shame to deny the rest of the class the chance to kiss my ass when they straggle in.”

 

Natasha was completely confident that if Clint was lounging around naked when their classmates returned, every single one of them would happily shoot him.

 

“Clothes. Now,” Brown instructed.

 

“Sure, sure.” Clint waved a hand negligently, and started towards their barracks. Natasha fell in beside him.

 

But then Clint stopped and turned back.

 

“Next time you want an excuse to ogle me naked, boys, just ask.” 

 

He directed the words to all four men, but Natasha saw the eye contact between Clint and Brown that lingered for a moment before Brown sneered and turned away.

 

“You’re an idiot,” she told Clint as they kept walking.

 

“I thought you already knew that.”

 

-o-

 

Day twenty-one marked the first of six days of nearly non-stop physical endurance training. Hell Week, they called it in the NAVY Seals.  _ Hell Eternity _ , Clint called it three hours into the first day.

 

She almost felt bad for him. Natasha didn’t think Clint was necessarily an anarchist - even that kind of belief system required a certain understanding and expectation for mankind that Clint didn’t seem to have - but he certainly didn’t buy into government or organizational structures in general. The STRIKEAT program was clearly grating on him - he didn’t like having so many people telling him what to do, he didn’t like so many parameters on  _ how _ he could do it, and he didn’t play well with others. At all.

 

Every single activity that had Clint working with anyone who wasn’t Natasha resulted in him failing, cheating or forcing the class to endure another of Brown’s ‘breaks’.

 

While the training was different than what she had undergone,  _ she _ was used to being a small cog in a very large machine. She knew her place, she knew how little and insignificant she was, and she knew that pushing back like Clint did was only going to be more painful in the end. She had tried it that way before.

 

So she endured.

 

Clint fought at every turn.

 

Natasha had the uncomfortable realization that she was grateful the Red Room had never gotten their hands on him. She knew he could be broken - she was fairly confident she could break him herself - and he could have been made into a very useful asset to them. But he would have been utterly destroyed by the process.

 

At the end of Hell Week, four more of their class had cut or been dropped. Natasha had read in the files she hacked into routinely that their class had started off with thirty.

 

Now they were down to twenty, plus her and Clint.

 

She was pleased to see that Katarina Martinez and Shannon Lawrence were still there. She was less pleased when she couldn’t decide if it was because she was  _ used _ to training alongside female operatives and their presence made her feel more comfortable, or if it was because she liked hearing Martinez and Lawrence trade dating horror stories in the head in the morning when the three of them showered.

 

-o-

 

After a long day of physical training in the morning and an afternoon of classes that taught Natasha more about how SHIELD operated than how to do threat assessment and an evening meal that resulted in Clint tripping over his own feet instead of being tripped by someone else for a change, they were called back to the parade ground.

 

“Agents, tonight one of you will lead your first team tactical operation exercise. The Kobayashi Maru is-”

 

“I’m sorry, the  _ what _ ?” It was Clint, interrupting Brown and making zero attempt to keep the laughter out of his voice.

 

“Are you hard of hearing, Agent Barton?” Brown snapped.

 

“Not these days,” Clint shrugged. “But I’m pretty sure I just heard you make a Star Trek reference, and even  _ you _ can’t be that-”

 

“Agent Barton.” Brown’s voice was the coldest Natasha had ever heard it. “Thank you for volunteering to lead the first team. Tonight, you and five of your classmates will attempt to defuse a hostage situation. A bank has been hit by an international terrorist organization. There are an unknown number of targets. There are an unknown number of civilians. There may or may not be a bomb involved. It is your mission to defuse the situation and save the hostages. Select your team.”

 

Clint heaved a long-suffering sigh, and then pushed past Natasha, to the front of the columns of students, and looked over everyone.

 

“You,” Clint pointed at Hernandez, one of Rumlow’s buddies. “And you,” he pointed at Olsen, an agent that Natasha was sure would wash out soon. “You,” he pointed at Shannon. “You,” he shoved his finger into the sternum of Ghorbani, who had pinned Clint down during hand-to-hand last week while -”You.” - Travers kicked him.

 

Natasha blinked. He hadn’t chosen her. 

 

She realized it was the first time that had ever happened. Ever since they had first met, five years ago, Clint had  _ picked her _ .

 

She didn’t realize, until that moment, that she had taken it for granted.

 

There was an uncomfortable, itching, burning sensation in her throat that she fought down.

 

“Team, assemble with Barton, and follow Agent Grier to the site. You will be given more mission details and tactical gear upon your arrival. The rest of you - you are dismissed for the night.”

 

The agents not told to follow Grier started to drift away, supremely unconcerned.

 

Only Rumlow and Natasha lingered, and she lifted her eyebrows when he sneered at her.

 

“Don’t worry, I’m sure your girlfriend will do just fine without you,” he said.

 

“He always does,” Natasha shot back.

 

Rumlow looked amused. Her general policy had been to ignore him, but being looked over by Clint had left her feeling prickly and out of place.

 

She turned on her heel and went to the shooting range.

 

It was 2243 when Clint returned to their barracks.

 

He had the look on his face of a man who didn’t want to take another step in his life. She had seen that look on men’s faces before. Had  _ put _ that look on men’s faces. She didn’t like it on his.

 

“Have fun with your new friends?” she asked him, using Russian because she didn’t trust herself to say it in English without letting her emotions show.

 

“Oh yeah. Loads. They’re just the best.”

 

Clint started stripping out of his clothes. Her eyes were drawn to the streaks of colored powder on his back, stomach, arms, and in his hair.

 

So it had been an exercise that used weapons . 

 

And he hadn’t chosen her.

 

Once he was down to just his briefs, Clint collapsed onto the bed beside hers and stared up at the ceiling. He scrubbed at his face, and then tucked his hands under his head.

 

“Messiest kill.”

 

They hadn’t played this game in a while, and the question momentarily threw Natasha off.

 

“Andrew Cunanan. 1997.”

 

“Who the hell is that? Was that?” Clint asked.

 

“The man who killed Gianni Versace.”

 

“Who-”

 

“Versace. Fashion designer. He needed to be gone. So I killed him and framed Cunanan. I killed Cunanan on a boat, and had to make it look like suicide. He struggled, and he was… He deserved to die.” Natasha shrugged. There had been a lot of blood, and a lot of bright floral upholstery fabric to soak it up.

 

“Yours?”

 

“Luis Donaldo Colosio. 1994.”

 

“Mexico?” Natasha asked. The name tugged on a memory.

 

“Yeah. He was running for president. I had to use a .38 Special.” Natasha could hear Clint’s disdain.

 

“Why?”

 

“Part of the job requirement.” He sighed. “That was my last gig before I let SHIELD catch up to me.”

 

“What’s the Kobayashi Maru?”

 

“Jesus, Nat, I thought the Red Room taught you pop culture stuff.”

 

“Important things, yes.  _ Star Trek _ isn’t important.”

 

“Okay, one, you’re wrong. Two, wow.  _ Wow _ . Three, I don’t- It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

 

“Four?” she prompted when he didn’t continue.

 

“It’s a no-win scenario. It’s impossible to beat the exercise.”

 

“This one, or that one?”

 

“Both,” he sighed, and then yawned. “S’why I didn’t pick you. Didn’t know if the failing score would go down on the performance records and tank your overachieving ass or not.”

 

Natasha blinked, and drew in a slow, deep breath.

 

“I thought you liked no-win scenarios,” she finally said.

 

“Not this one.”

 

-o-

 

Clint was still in a funk the next day, even though they were being sent to do exercises with the US Army Sniper School instructors. 

 

Natasha figured that if Sniper School didn’t make Clint happy, nothing would.

 

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he still wasn’t allowed to use his bow. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that they spent four hours stalking in a rainstorm. Or maybe it had something to do with the mess hall coffee machine being broken.

 

In the afternoon, when they finally settled down on the range to shoot targets, Natasha spotted while Clint unleashed his anger upon the target 800 meters away. He didn’t need her to provide him with calculations for wind speed and distance, but she did it anyway. It was good practice for her. She was a good sniper, but nothing compared to Clint.

 

“Bucky Barnes was hotter than Captain America,” Clint finally said after scoring another clean hit.

 

“You’re right,” Natasha agrees. “I guess that means you’re number five on my list.”

 

Clint didn’t seem to react to the demotion at all.

 

He took another shot.

 

Natasha bribed half of their class with whatever she could to make sure she was chosen to be on the next team to complete the Kobayashi Maru.

 

-o-

 

Katarina Martinez led the next team. She chose Natasha, which was a pleasant surprise because Natasha hadn’t bribed her with anything. She also chose Shannon, though, and three other agents - Olsen, who was somehow still there; Gomez, whom Rumlow seemed to consider his personal punching bag when his ire wasn’t directed Clint’s way; and Grier Jr. Natasha was fairly certain only Clint wasn’t aware that Grier Jr. was the son of Shoutyface. 

 

Natasha was almost as uncomfortable being chosen for the team as she had been with not being chosen for Clint’s. She didn’t like being in  _ this _ group.

 

She liked the exercise itself even less.

 

Katarina was a good leader, though. Smart, decisive, with good instincts, but willing to listen to different opinions and admit when she was wrong. She and Shannon worked well together, and Natasha partnered with Olsen to try to secure the perimeter while Gomez and Grier Jr. backed up the two women.

 

Olsen was the first of the team to be taken out. Then three hostages were killed. Then Shannon and Gomez. Katarina next. 

 

When all of the hostages had been executed, Natasha stood up from her spot and surveyed the simulated carnage.

 

_ What was the point? _

 

-o-

 

Five weeks in, and Natasha was starting to wonder if this entire training camp was a  _ ploy _ to test her.

 

Typically, unless it was a full-day exercise, they spent the mornings doing PT and the afternoons sitting in classrooms. Natasha found that she knew more than she thought she had about the way that SHIELD operated, and she found that Clint knew less than she thought he had.

 

She also couldn’t help but feel like it was a trap.

 

The class she enjoyed the most, and it had taken her a while to admit that she enjoyed it at all, was a situational analysis course. The class reviewed recent operations conducted by SHIELD, and by the top military and paramilitary operations in the world. They discussed what had gone well, what had gone badly, and how to do it differently.

 

Natasha only shared her opinions when called upon, but she found herself enjoying the activity, found herself learning more and more about her classmates based on their reactions. Found herself learning  _ too much _ about SHIELD.

 

There was no way they would let her leave. Not with all that she knew about them. She knew the KGB had had agents embedded within US military organizations very deeply, even now. But she also knew that no one had been this deeply exposed to SHIELD.

 

She knew far, far too much.

 

“Today, we will review a recent SHIELD operation in Vienna.”

 

The classroom was set up as a lecture hall, and a projector displayed a map of the Innere Stadt, the historical district of Vienna.

 

Natasha sat up straighter in her chair.

 

Beside her, Clint continued to lean back in his chair, so that only two legs were on the ground. He had a pencil balanced on his nose, and looked monumentally bored.

 

“SHIELD received intel that an enemy agent responsible for dozens of high profile assassinations and events in the last ten years was in Vienna after completing their most recent operation.”

 

The projector shifted to a new image.

 

The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrating as it returned to atmosphere on February first.

 

Clint’s chair landed back on all four feet with a sharp click, and he grabbed the pencil as it flew off of his face.

 

At the front of the room, Agent Brown, their usual instructor in the course, continued.

 

“SHIELD sent in an agent with a kill order. Let’s call his target X. Let’s call the agent M. M and X have several years of experience going up against each other, and he’s the only one that SHIELD has been able to get close to X. X is one of the highest profile targets that SHIELD has ever hunted.”

 

The slide changed to a rooftop. A very familiar rooftop.

 

The image was a satellite photograph, and two figures on the roof had been circled in red. 

 

“Agent M managed to track X. After pursuing X through the city, M cornered X on this rooftop.”

 

Another slide change. The rooftop was still in the center, but the image had been zoomed out, showing the buildings surrounding it. Six yellow Xs were marked on the slide.

 

Natasha felt her blood freeze.

 

Beside her, Clint snapped the pencil in half.

 

“In addition to Agent M, SHIELD sent in a STRIKE team to cover M and make sure that X was secured. The STRIKE team took up positions here, here, here, here, here and here.”

 

Clint stood up, and most of the class turned to stare at him.

 

“Something to add, Agent Barton?” Brown asked.

 

“Where do I go to DOR?”

 

The  _ entire _ class turned at that point. Even Natasha.

 

“You can’t drop this course, Barton. It’s part of STRIKEAT.”

 

“I actually know that. I want to be DOR’d from the program.”

 

Natasha abruptly slammed down all of her carefully, painfully constructed mental walls as Clint spoke. She didn’t allow herself to think or feel  _ anything _ as his words washed over her.

 

“Report to Agent Grier. He can process you out.”

 

Without another word, without a single glance at Natasha, Clint turned and left.

 

“Fucking finally,” Rumlow groaned. There were a few nervous chuckles from the class, but a handful of agents looked disappointed by Clint’s exit.

 

“Returning to Vienna,” Brown said. “M had orders to kill on sight. Instead, once he was in place on the roof, he negotiated with X. Agent M is one of SHIELD’s most successful agents, with a perfect mission success rate and more than a few agency commendation medals that he refuses to accept. Not only is he one of SHIELD’s top assets, but his value to  _ other _ agencies as a hostage, informant or double agent was estimated to outweigh the value of killing X.”

 

Brown left the slide projector on, and walked to the center front of the class.

 

“Thoughts?” he asked.

 

“What were the mission parameters for the STRIKE team?” Katarina asked.

“The STRIKE team were instructed to make sure that X didn’t leave the rooftop. Maximum casualty allowance.”

 

Natasha’s brain was a mess of white noise, and she had to work very hard to keep her heart rate even and her eyes focused on the image of Vienna.

 

She frowned, remembering the crisp air blowing on the rooftop, the overcast sky that was almost the same color as Clint’s eyes.

 

“Agent Romanoff, you have something?”

 

Brown’s voice startled her, and Natasha was surprised to see that her hand was in the air.

 

“The positions that the STRIKE team took - they don’t afford the best sight lines, and it looks like there are at least two ways that X could have made it off of the roof without them being able to stop X. Only Agent M could have covered those blind spots.”

 

Brown nodded, and crossed his arms over his chest.

 

“Yeah. Agent M and the STRIKE team weren’t in communication, and the STRIKE team was following Agent M as he chased X through Vienna, so the set-up was sloppy and risky.”

 

“Why weren’t they in communication?” Rumlow asked. “That’s stupid - did the tech malfunction?”

 

Brown’s shoulders tensed.

 

“Agent M was unaware that the STRIKE team had been assigned to the mission as well.”

 

The onslaught of noise, of emotion and thoughts in her brain, ceased immediately at those words.

 

Natasha felt as if she had been dunked into a tub of ice-cold water, and she blinked.

 

_ Now, _ she understood Fury.

 

Brown had described Clint as more or less SHIELD’s most valuable asset. He was their equivalent to her and the KGB. They hadn’t trusted him to fulfill his mission, and had sent in a team with orders to kill both Clint and Natasha rather than let her leave.

 

And yet...

 

“What was the mission outcome?” Shannon asked.

 

“Agent M convinced X to switch sides. The STRIKE team was ordered to stand down.”

 

“Who oversaw the mission?” Natasha asked.

 

“Director Fury himself.”

 

He had been prepared to sacrifice Clint to ensure that Natasha didn’t walk away, but when Clint disobeyed direct orders, Fury had trusted him and called off STRIKE.

 

She wondered, not for the first time, at just how similar Fury was to Madame B.

 

-o-

 

When she returned to the barracks, Clint’s belongings were gone. Even the bed linens had been stripped away. It was as if he had never been there at all. A single arrow had been placed on her pillow.

 

-o-

 

The next day was the first of four days of defensive driving training. They were skills she already knew, but they were skills she also  _ enjoyed _ .

 

And it was a relief to get onto a dirt bike and complete the obstacle course with a near perfect score. Clint, who had once confessed to getting motion sickness, wouldn’t have been able to come even close to her.

 

No one else did either.

 

At dinner that first day, Shannon and Katarina sat with her.

 

The second day, Natasha joined them for lunch.

 

The third day, Olsen joined them.

 

The fourth day, Jack Rollins joined them.

 

No one asked her about Clint, and only Rumlow continued to joke about him.

 

It was as if he had never been there at all.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

 

Waverly was just as dull and depressing as it had been the last time Clint had been there.

 

The farm, thirty miles outside of Waverly, was in an even worse state of disrepair.

 

But that, Clint supposed, was what happened when you leave your home at the age of eight to go join the circus and become a world-class assassin.

 

The world moved on, but Clint was still that kid on his own, walking up the creaking stairs to the room he had once shared with Barney, a lifetime ago.

 

He sat down on the bed and felt movement. He shouted and jumped up, pulling his bow and knocking an arrow and-

Just stopping himself short of murdering a mouse as it wiggled out from under the faded and rumpled  _ Star Trek _ comforter on his bed.

 

With a groan, Clint returned the arrow to the quiver and left the room.

 

He couldn’t do this. Not tonight.

 

He got back into the shitty Chevy Malibu he had stolen in Birmingham and drove back to Waverly. It might be dull and depressing, but the Holiday Inn was probably marginally less rodent-infested than his house. Plus, there was a Blockbuster within walking distance.

 

-o-

 

He was in the middle of his third bag of Cheetos - one to go with each of the  _ Die Hard _ movies he had been marathoning - when someone knocked at his door.

 

Clint congratulated himself on being ambidextrous, and used his non-orange hand to pull out his Beretta from under the pillow he had been leaning on.

 

Another knock, a little more forceful.

 

“Open the door, Barton. I don’t know what poor asshole’s credit card you booked this room under, but it’d be a shame for him to have to pay for the damage when I break the door down.”

 

Clint rolled his eyes at that, but didn’t respond to the threat.

 

The door shook with the impact of something, but the dresser that Clint had shoved against it didn’t budge.

 

Clint ate another Cheeto and settled back down on the bed, resting the gun against his thigh.

 

“Barton, I never figured you were a coward.”

 

With a groan, he paused the movie and got up from the bed.

 

It was an effort to shove the dresser away from the door with just one hand, but he did it. And congratulated himself by getting a few more Cheetos before he returned to the door. He leaned against it. Waiting, listening and-

 

He opened it just as Agent Brown was in motion, but without a door to stop his forward motion, the man fell into the room, just catching himself before he face-planted on the carpet.

 

“Make yourself at home,” Clint said.

 

He kicked Brown’s feet clear of the door and swung it closed again.

 

Leaning back against it, he watched Brown pull himself to his feet and returned the other man’s glare.

 

“Shouldn’t you be busy boring people to death with history lessons or shouting at them?” Clint asked.

 

“Six-week mark. Everyone has a seventy-two hour leave. It’s usually the last big cutting point in the program. Everyone has been through the Kobayashi Maru and Hell Week. We give them three days to be with their families, and the ones who aren’t cut out for this realize it and don’t come back.”

 

“That include you?”

 

Brown gave him a dark look.

 

“I didn’t think it would include  _ you _ ,” Brown sneered. He looked around the hotel room. By Clint’s usual standards, it wasn’t a complete disaster. “Like what you’ve done with the place.”

 

“Too bad, you’re not staying.”

 

“You’re blocking the door.”

 

_ That _ was a good point.

 

Clint moved away from the door and resumed his place on the bed. He would have liked to pick up with the movie again, too, but Brown was standing in front of the screen.

 

So he picked up the bag of Cheetos and continued to eat them.

 

Brown looked absolutely disgusted with him. Good thing Clint was immune to caring.

 

“Agent Romanoff is on track to graduate at the top of the class.”

 

“Duh.” Clint tossed a Cheeto in the air, and then caught it on his tongue.

 

“Rumlow will probably come in second.”

 

“That guy’s gonna come back and bite you in the ass one day.” Clint tossed the next Cheeto higher.

 

“Like you did?”

 

“I didn’t bite anyone in the ass. I got  _ bitten _ in the ass,” Clint snarled. The next Cheeto went higher and-

 

Brown grabbed it before it could land in Clint’s mouth, and put it back in the bag. He tried to pull the bag away, and Clint tightened his grip on it.

 

Clint glared at him.

 

“Fuck you,” he snarled.

 

“If you want to fuck, you need to wash your hands. And take a shower. And-”

 

“I wasn’t actually propositioning you.” Clint jerked the bag away, and the Cheetos spilled across the comforter as the bag ripped.

 

“Cheetos,  _ no _ .”

 

“I still can’t figure out why Fury puts up with you,” Brown said.

 

“He doesn’t. He doesn’t fucking trust me to tie my own damn shoelaces. He doesn’t  _ put up _ with me. He humors me, and then treats me like a fucking-”

 

“God, you’re so whiny.”

 

“I-”

 

Brown lifted his eyebrows, waiting for Clint to continue.

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“Mm. You had your chance and passed on that, Barton. Want to tell me why you decided to be such a drama queen about dropping out of the program? We all knew you weren’t going to finish STRIKEAT. But I had my money on you toughing it out another few weeks before you gave in to the inevitable.”

 

“Oh yeah? You figure’d I’d hang around long enough to do the Recover and Return exercise, and then peace out?”

 

“I figured you would get arrested on the Recover and Return exercise, and not be allowed to return.”

 

Clint was startled into a laugh. He could actually picture that pretty easily.

 

“How much money did you lose?”

 

“None. We go by Price is Right rules, and no one thought you would drop out before week six.”

 

“What can I say - I’m an unpredictable guy.” He was pleased, though, that no one had made money off of him. That would have been just another turn of the knife, really.

 

“So, that’s it? You walk away from STRIKEAT - from SHIELD - from Romanoff, because you didn’t like Fury giving you backup without your blessing?”

 

“Without my- You don’t know  _ shit _ , Brown!”

 

Clint was on his feet in an instant, all of the rage that had erupted inside of him when he saw that slide of Vienna and those six fucking yellow Xs exploding as he finally found a target for it.

 

He shoved Brown back half a step, and then Brown shoved at him. Clint punched him in the gut, and Brown grabbed him by the hair.

 

They shoved, punching, kicking, and grappling with each other until they were on Clint’s bed, Cheetos crushed beneath them, providing the most bizarre background noise and texture to any fight Clint had ever been part of.

 

Finally, though, Clint managed to pin Brown on the bed under him, forearm against his windpipe and his body weight keeping him down.

 

“I asked her to trust me,” Clint bit out as he pressed down. Brown’s face was red, aind his fingers, where they gripped Clint’s arm, were white-knuckled. “I asked her to trust me, and meanwhile, there were six SHIELD agents ready to blow her fucking head off. Fury made me a goddamn traitor.”

 

“Is your allegiance to Romanoff or to SHIELD?” Brown managed to wheeze.

 

Clint realized he had said too much. He sat back on Brown’s thighs and released his hold on the man’s throat.

 

“You took an oath,” Brown reminded him, grimacing as he massaged his throat. “You gave your word.”

 

“Exactly.” Clint rolled off of Brown entirely, grimacing as he crushed a few more Cheetos. “I gave her my word. And it wasn’t my word to give.”

 

Clint had spent the better - well, the  _ worst  _ \- part of his childhood being manipulated and lied to, being led to believe he was making his own decisions, made to think he was doing the right thing. He had promised himself long ago that he wasn’t going to put himself back in that same position. It was one thing to be given orders - it was another to find out that what  _ he _ did didn’t mean shit. 

 

Those snipers could have taken her out the moment she reached out to touch him. The second he turned his back on her. The-

 

“I was in the eighth storey window of an apartment building adjacent to the south-eastern corner of the roof.”

 

Clint frowned and looked back at Brown.

 

“What? You were on the STRIKE team?”

 

Brown nodded. 

 

“I volunteered my team when I heard it was your mission.” Brown’s lips tugged up into a lopsided smirk. “I thought we’d be working together, and I would get the chance to give you shit for never calling me.”

 

“I meant to,” Clint shrugged. “But I lost your number. I’m not even lying. I thought it was in my wallet, but when I got back to DC, I looked and-”

 

“Clint, it was four years ago. Get over it. I did.”

 

“I’m not hung up on you,” Clint snorted. 

 

“Good. Then we’re on even ground.”

 

“The kind of ground where you were chill with having to kill me?”

 

Brown lifted an eyebrow, and Clint rolled his eyes.

 

“I’m not an idiot, for fuck’s sake. No way Fury deployed an entire STRIKE team without telling me just to cover my back - you all had orders to kill her or both of us if it came to it.”

 

“My team thought it was shitty, and a waste. We were relieved when the order to stand down came through. Though Grier bet $200 that she was going to kill you when you turned your back to her. He’s been pretty pissed about losing to Thomas. Hasn’t helped that you’re a complete asshole.”

 

“I don’t do things by halves,” Clint shrugged.

 

“Except STRIKEAT.”

 

“That shit hasn’t been about me, anyway. It’s been for Nat since day one. She’ll do better without me there.”

 

“That last part is true, at least. Her scores have started to really improve without you there to drag her down.”

 

“See? Better for everyone.”

 

“So that’s it, you’re just going to pack it in and live out of Holiday Inn and binge on Cheetos?”

 

Clint shrugged again.

 

“I was thinking about going into pest control. Always had a knack for dealing with vermin.”

 

“Hm.” Brown rose from the bed.

 

Clint watched as the other man attempted to rid himself of Cheeto dust and failed miserably. It almost made him want to smirk.

 

“Good luck with that,” Brown said, and moved towards the door.

 

“That’s… that’s it?”

 

Brown shrugged.

 

“You don’t want to be part of SHIELD anymore? Fine. I’ll let Fury know. He might even give you a twenty-four hour grace period before authorities are given an anonymous tip about where to find George Heyerman’s stolen credit card. SHIELD will be fine without you. Besides, we’ve got Romanoff now. How many master assassins do we need?”

 

That stung a bit, but not the way Clint had expected it to.

 

He couldn’t say that he was  _ happy _ with the prospect of Natasha being used to fill his shoes, that wasn’t how he had envisioned it going down when he had asked her to trust him. 

 

“You’d be surprised,” Clint retorted.

 

“If you want the big speech about how SHIELD needs you and it’s the right thing to do, then you need to speak to someone else.”

 

Clint snorted.

 

“Yeah, no thanks. I’ve heard those speeches before. You seem to be lingering an awful lot for a guy content to let me start Hawkeye Extermination Services.”

 

Brown lifted his eyebrows.

 

“Just what kind of pests were you planning on eliminating?”

 

“The fun kind.”

 

Brown sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked at Clint in an uncomfortably intense way, making him all too aware that he was covered in Cheeto dust and had a split lip.

 

“You might as well do it with SHIELD, then. Or is it that you  _ don’t _ want to partner with Romanoff?”

 

“That’s not-”

 

“It’s just one more betrayal. It won’t be a big deal to her.”

 

Clint glared.

 

“Really? That’s your big guns? Been sitting on that the whole time, haven’t you? Me leaving is betraying Nat.”

 

Brown shrugged unrepentantly.

 

“If you’re leaving SHIELD because you can’t stand to work for an organization that would treat you the way it did, and you don’t care that you’re leaving her  _ alone _ with that organization free to treat her exactly the same way, then it seems like you’re betraying her.”

 

“She’s smarter than me.”

 

“Absolutely no one has ever doubted that.”

 

“What the fuck do you want from me?” Clint demanded. “I’m not going to come back and fall into line and become a good little boy ready to do trust exercises with Rumlow - and I’m serious, that guy screams ‘I’m a mass murderer’ - and just get swallowed up by SHIELD.”

 

“So don’t. Come back and make sure Rumlow doesn’t finish top three in the course. Those positions get fast-tracked to commanding STRIKE teams.”

 

“Aw, fuck. That’s- that’s not going to work on me, dude.”

 

“Had to try.”

 

Brown moved towards the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.

 

“Oh, one last thing.”

 

“Jesus- What? Gonna tell me you  _ are _ still pining after me and beg me to come back?”

 

“No. I’ve actually been dating a guy for a few months. He’s a doctor. Really great. Better taste in music than you, too.”

 

“Congrats. But that’s not much of an accomplishment.”

 

“I need to move Romanoff over to Alpha, Bravo or Charlie when she reports back from leave. Any recommendations for which team to move her to?”

 

Clint frowned.

 

“I’ve been gone for a week - you’ve left her alone on Delta?”

 

Brown nodded.

 

“She hasn’t asked to be moved. She’s been doing fine on her own. But the entire point of STRIKEAT is  _ team _ training, and if she’s not going to accept that you’ve abandoned her, then I’m going to have to step in. Which team do you think she’ll do best on?”

 

“Put her on Bravo. She’ll step into a leadership position on that team when Alvarez doesn’t come back from this leave.”

 

“What makes you think Alvarez isn’t coming back?”

 

“His mom has cancer, and his brother and sister are still kids. He’s not going to finish STRIKEAT.”

 

“I’ll take that under consideration. Thanks for your time, Agent- Clint.”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

Brown left without another word, and Clint moved the dresser back against the door.

 

Once his barricade had been restored, he scooped up the comforter on his bed and tried to shake the dust out in the shower.

 

He turned on the water and watched the orange dust turn to orange mud and swirl down the train.

 

It wasn’t like he had  _ abandoned _ Nat. She wasn’t a stray puppy that needed someone to look after her. She was a world-class assassin. She was smart. She was strong. She-

 

_ Aw, hell _ .

 

-o-

He’d meant to be on time.

 

Well, he’d meant to arrive fashionably late - 0605 at the latest. But there had been a car accident. And EMS wasn’t on site and-

 

Clint would never, ever tell anyone that he was late getting back to fucking STRIKEAT training because he’d pulled over to keep a teenager calm and make sure the cut on her scalp wasn’t fatal while waiting for EMS. He also wouldn’t tell anyone that they had gotten into an argument about music.

 

U Got It Bad was a million times better than U Don’t Have to Call, and honestly, what the fuck were kids learning these days?

 

But she did insist on giving him her Nelly Furtado CD. 

 

And Clint maybe sang along to it at the top of his lungs while he drove the rest of the way to Fort Benning.

 

But no one had to know about it, ever.

 

When he did finally arrive at the STRIKEAT parade ground, lugging his duffel bag and bow case, sunglasses hiding the worst of the black eye he hadn’t realized Brown had gifted him with and a freshly-purchased John Deere hat on his head, it was already 0730.

 

Clint figured the training agents were off running or doing something mind-numbingly boring. And while he was  _ here, _ he wasn’t in that much of a hurry to get back into the swing of things.

 

So he dropped his bags down, pulled out a copy of the latest issue of  _ Bowhunter _ magazine, and kept himself occupied.

 

It was 0845 when the class ran past him, running in the way that they usually did when returning from something awful.

 

He wasn’t sure who saw him first, but Rumlow was the first to react.

 

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

 

Clint grinned, making sure it was his most annoying, the pain of his healing lip tearing open again totally worth it to see the absolute disgust on Rumlow’s face.

 

“Missed you too much to stay away, lover.”

 

Rumlow actually tripped over his own feet at that, and the entire class came to an uneasy halt.

 

“Agent Barton.”

 

He looked over to see Brown briskly striding their way.

 

“Agent Brown.”

 

“Is Fury going to pull you out of STRIKEAT again to go off and play Robin Hood, or are you with us for the duration now?”

 

Huh. A cover.

 

Clint hadn’t really expected that - not after the way Brown had set him up from day one to fail. Well, he’d at least held the door open so Clint could do all the failing he wanted to.

 

His eyes scanned the class. Alvarez, as predicted, was gone.

 

Olsen was still there, though, which was pleasantly surprising. The kid had kind of grown on Clint, and the crush he had on an oblivious Natasha was adorable.

 

“Who knows? When the world needs saving, gotta call Hawkeye.” He stood up and stretched. “Did I miss anything good? Aside from Romanoff kicking the piss out of everyone while I wasn’t here to even up the playing field?”

 

“You’ve got fifteen minutes to meet us on the shooting range, Barton. And no, you can’t bring your bow.”

 

“Wouldn’t be fair to everyone else, anyway.”

 

-o-

 

Natasha had  _ friends _ . 

 

Clint arrived at the shooting range on time, but the rest of the class had already settled in to their spots, and Nat was situated between Martinez and Olsen, leaving Clint to walk down the line until he found an open station beside Rollins. 

 

She hadn’t even acknowledged him when the agents had spotted him earlier, her clear gaze sliding over him as if he wasn’t a threat worth assessing. It was…

 

Well, it was shitty. And it was exactly what he deserved. Didn’t mean he liked it, though.

 

At lunch, she sat down with a  _ group _ . And she talked to them. She even smirked at something Martinez said to her. 

 

She didn’t look at Clint once.

 

“Uh oh, trouble in paradise?”

 

Clint sighed as Rumlow sat down in the mess hall across from him. Predictable. So predictable.

 

“If this is your version of paradise, you gotta get out more, buddy.”

 

Rumlow sneered at him.

 

Clint lifted an eyebrow and took a sip from his coffee. 

 

“Look, if you’re here to be intimidating, just… get it out of your system. But, actually, can I offer some advice? All those steroids you’re popping or whatever - you know it’s not doing your dick any favors, right? And while I am so  _ so _ not interested anymore, seems a shame to let a dick go to waste. And I can’t see there being all that much more of you worth an effort, so…”

 

In retrospect, Clint being the cause of a full-on brawl in the mess hall shouldn’t have surprised anyone. That it had taken that  _ long _ to happen was the only thing that seemed to surprise Brown, who shook his head as Rumlow was taken to the infirmary and directed Clint to spend his afternoon cleaning the mess hall while  _ everyone else _ got to go on about their regularly scheduled days, even though they had been fully involved in the fight as well.

 

It felt like he had been cleaning for  _ hours _ , but bizarrely, the clock on the wall indicated only forty-five minutes when Clint became aware of someone watching him.

 

He didn’t even need to look to know who it was.

 

“Dude, don’t you have classes to teach or something? You pick the worst times for booty calls. I’m covered in mashed potatoes.”

 

“I’ve seen you covered in worse.”

 

Clint spun around at the all-too-familiar and completely unexpected voice.

 

Coulson walked into the mess hall, impossibly boring gray suit a sharp contrast to the still mostly-dirty mess hall. He made a face as he almost stepped in a pile of something, and then took a seat on one of the few miraculously unscathed chairs.

 

“What are you doing here?” Clint asked.

 

Coulson lifted one eyebrow, face shifting into an expression that Clint knew very well.

 

_ Really, Barton? Even you aren’t this dumb _ .

 

Apparently, though, he was.

 

“My top agent goes MIA for a week, and then shows back up at the elite training facility he ran away from and starts a massive brawl. What do you think I’m doing here?”

 

“I didn’t  _ run _ away.”

 

“You went to  _ Iowa _ , Clint.  _ Iowa _ .”

 

“When you say it like that, it sounds worse than it was.”

 

“ _ Iowa _ .”

 

“You don’t have to keep saying it. The first time you really nailed it. It’s not getting any-”

 

“ _ I _ -”

 

“Jesus Christ, Phil! Yeah. I ran away to Iowa. But I came back, didn’t I?”

 

Coulson crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t look impressed. He never did. Not even when Clint had killed three guys with one arrow that time in Morocco. Which might have been because of the amount of paperwork said  _ awesome _ shot resulted in.

 

“Why did you?”

 

“Oh, Phil, come on. You’re not my shrink-”

 

“You don’t talk to her anyway.”

 

“So why would I talk to you? She’s scarier than you. If she can’t crack me, you won’t.”

 

“Therapy isn’t an interrogation, Barton.” Coulson sounded only slightly more exasperated than he normally did when talking to Clint.

 

“Sure, but what if she’s a double agent?”

 

Coulson rubbed at his temples.

 

“You really think SHIELD’s staff therapist is a double agent? Who is she working for - Hydra?”

 

“Who knows? I’m just saying - probably better to keep my mouth shut just in case.”

 

“Barton-”

 

“Look, I came back. That’s what counts, right?”

 

“Are you going to run again?” Coulson’s voice was serious, low and somewhere between soothing and intimidating as hell.

 

“Probably not,” Clint answered as honestly as he could. “Any more surprises in store for me? Any more of my illusions you guys gonna shatter?”

 

“Have you given up on the tooth fairy yet?”

 

“Yeah. Waking up in Shanghai with a missing tooth and an infection instead of a quarter kind of cured me of that one.”

 

“That op was six months ago, Barton.”

 

“You know what I really haven’t figured out - if Santa isn’t real, who the fuck is eating the cookies I leave out on Christmas Eve every year?”

 

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

 

“Not if the answer is going to be you or Nick Fury.”

 

“It’s Hill.”

 

“Nope - if it was Hill, breaking into my house to eat my cookies and drink my milk, there’s no way she’d leave without killing me too.”

 

“You’re right. Are you done avoiding the subject now? Or do you want to talk about the Easter Bunny?”

 

Clint sighed.

 

“I don’t know what you want from me, Phil. I came back. I’ll stick it out. I took an oath, and all of that shit.”

 

Coulson was quiet for several minutes, watching Clint with the steady gaze that always made Clint itch. Coulson was just always so  _ calm _ . Kind of like Nat.

 

That realization was somewhere between comforting and terrifying, and Coulson’s next words didn’t do all that much to shift the balance one way or the other.

 

“Do you remember when I brought you in?”

 

As if Clint would  _ ever _ forget.

 

“You mean, do I remember that time when I was minding my  _ own damn business _ singing karaoke with-”

 

“Let’s not get delusions of grandeur. Singing is a bit of a stretch, even for  _ your _ ego-”

 

“ _ -with _ my friends, and you cornered me in a fucking bathroom stall with the promise of a blowjob - which you still haven’t delivered on, by the way - and then you handcuffed me to the fucking urinal, Phil. And then you  _ shot _ me.”

 

“You got out of the cuffs.”

 

“You still shot me in the  _ ass _ , Phil. My  _ ass _ .”

 

Coulson shrugged, completely unapologetic.

 

“You deserved it for what you did to  _ Don’t Stop Believin’ _ .” 

 

Clint glared, but, as always, Coulson looked completely remorseless.

 

“Was there a point to this trip down memory lane?”

 

“What did I tell you, that night?”

 

“To stop acting like a baby, because it was only a flesh wound and scars are cool?”

 

“After that part.”

 

“Never sing  _ Journey  _ again?”

 

Coulson sighed.

 

Clint sighed louder.

 

“You said you wanted to give me the chance to save the world. And then some garbage about dental plans and a 401k and-”

 

“I asked you if you believed that the world could be a better place, and if you wanted something to believe in.”

 

“Yeah, well…”

 

“It was never SHIELD that I was asking you to believe in, Clint.”

 

“Then what was it?”

 

Coulson gave him the look again.

 

_ Really, Barton? Even you aren’t this dumb _ .

 

“Pretty sure my twenty questions ran out like five years ago, Phil. Just… tell me whatever it is you think I should have figured out by now.”

 

“Romanoff.”

 

“What about her?”

 

“You believed the world would be a better place with her in it. And you believed in  _ her _ . “

 

“And, what, you believed in  _ me, _ so you had a squad of six elite agents ready to put bullets in both of us? Jesus, Phil, I asked her to  _ trust _ me, and the whole fucking time you were going to  _ kill _ me!”

 

“Would you rather have had your blood on Romanoff’s hands, or her blood on our hands?”

 

The question was delivered in Coulson’s ever-present calm tone, but it didn’t stop Clint from taking a step backwards at the all-too-visceral mental images of both possibilities.

 

“ _ Neither _ .”

 

Coulson nodded.

 

“Then it’s a good thing we trusted you, too, then.”

 

He said it like that was it - like that was  _ it _ . As if everything made sense, and that was all there was to it and-

 

Clint wanted to hit something. 

 

He thought back to Natasha asking him to kill her because he would do it quicker than her handlers at the KGB would. 

 

He tossed down the rag he had sort of been using to wipe up goop, and sat down heavily on the table behind him.

 

“What do you want from me, Phil?” he asked it again, feeling so tired and old in that moment. Feeling every one of his twenty-seven years, and then some. 

 

“I want to know if you still believe the world can be better, and if you still want something to believe in.”

 

Clint thought about Natasha, about that smile she had exchanged with Martinez over lunch. About the way Martinez and Olsen had flanked her on the shooting range. About the way she had helped Rollins up during Hell Week when he had twisted his ankle. 

 

He sighed.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, Phil. I still believe. And I’ve already got something to believe in.”

 

Coulson actually smiled at him. Sort of. The corners of his lips tilted up just the slightest amount. 

 

“I  _ believe _ that you still owe me a blowjob. And after shooting me in the ass and making me wait six fucking years, it better be spectacular.”

 

The smile vanished, and Coulson stood back up. He looked around the still mostly-wrecked room.

 

“I’ll leave you to it. Looks like you’ve got some work to do here. And I never  _ promised _ to blow you, Clint. I just asked if you were interested.”

 

-o-

 

Clint sat on his bed, alone and restless, feeling like a pimply-faced teen worried about getting stood up by their prom date at the last second. There were, he knew, problems with the metaphor he had latched onto, but he didn’t have a closer equivalent.

 

Natasha’s stuff was still in the Delta barracks, neatly tucked away, bed immaculately made, not a shred of personality on display, and the arrow Clint had left her nowhere in sight.

 

He had a brief secondary and almost aneurysm-inducing worry that Nat was shacking up with Olsen and wouldn’t come back to the barracks at  _ all _ . But that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

 

After three hours and no sign of her, Clint had begun making a list of all of the possible places she could be, and Olsen’s bunk was starting to seem like the most reasonable one. He wasn’t  _ panicking _ , but he was started to get pretty damn close to it.

 

But at 2300, she entered the barracks, blank-faced and her body language open and languid, as if she’d just come in from a stroll around the block.

 

She didn’t even look directly at him. 

 

Clint felt his throat constrict. He should say something. But he couldn’t say  _ anything _ .

 

She reached under her bed and pulled out a small black backpack.

 

“Get your gear,” she said, and turned on her heel and walked out of the barracks.

 

Clint stared after her for a moment, wondering if he had hallucinated the whole thing or-

 

He grabbed his bow and quiver, and took off after her.

 

Natasha was halfway across the parade ground, her walk brisk and determined, when he caught up to her.

 

“Nice night for a walk,” he said, finally finding words. Stupid words, but hey, it was  _ him _ .

 

She didn’t respond, which could mean that she wasn’t talking to him or that she was greeting his unnecessary babbling with her usual silence.

 

He needed a handbook. 

 

_ How to be Spy Friends for Dummies _ .

 

Actually, he probably needed something more remedial than that.

 

_ How to be Friends for Dummies. _

 

_ How to be a Functional Human for Dummies. _

 

His mental reading list kept adding up, and he was only sort of aware that he knew where Nat was guiding them.

 

She came to a stop at the start of the Trench, and Clint stopped beside her.

 

There was, of course, no one around. The perimeter lights around the base didn’t cast any light within the dark valley between the outer concrete walls of the Trench, and it stood out as a tunnel of darkness ahead of them. 

 

Nat opened up her bag and removed three flares. She handed one to Clint, and he stared at it stupidly while she lit the other two.

 

She tossed one far into the air, sending it sailing over the Trench. It landed at least fifty yards down the length. She tossed the other flare half that far.

 

The first portion of the Trench was barely illuminated by the flickering red light, shadows barely pulled out from the general darkness.

 

“When you’re in position, light and drop the last flare,” Nat instructed.

 

“What - there aren’t even any targets up,” he had to point out.

 

“I’m the target,” she said.

 

“Um.”

 

She arched an eyebrow at him and crossed her arms. 

 

“Right. Gimme a minute.”

 

Clint wasn’t sure  _ why _ they were doing this, or what exactly she expected him to do. Or what he expected  _ her _ to do.

 

He tucked the flare into his quiver and jogged down the outside of the Trench, finding a ladder that would take him to the top of the wall.

 

Clint had scoped out this position a few weeks before, when some army sniper had claimed it and racked up a kill on every single member of the STRIKEAT class that had run the Trench that day. Except, of course, for Nat. Clint hadn’t made the run that day, content to just shoot up the rest of his class instead.

 

Once he had positioned himself, about a third of the way down the Trench but with good sight lines - well,  _ decent _ sight lines. There was no true shooting vantage point into the Trench - it would have made it too easy. But this spot was definitely the best-looking one Clint had found.

 

The trick, of course, was that Nat would  _ know _ where he was as soon as he tossed the flare.

 

With a groan, Clint pulled the flare out of his quiver and balanced along the edge of the wall. He made his way down about halfway before lighting the flare and tossing it towards the end of the course.

 

She would still know what side he was on, but it was at least  _ kind of _ a distraction.

 

It took him a handful of seconds to make it back to his perch, and by the time he had, Nat was already nearly a third of the way through the course.

 

He caught sight of her shadow disappearing behind a spot of cover just as he nocked an arrow and sighted along it.

 

She was hard to spot, the lack of light, her impressive stealth skills and her black clothing all adding up to make it damn near impossible to keep his eyes on her.

 

Good thing Clint was used to doing the impossible.

 

As he tracked her progress, it occurred to him that he still didn’t know what her goal here was. 

 

Did she  _ want _ him to shoot her or not?

 

It was a test. He was sure of that. But what the fuck was she testing him for?

 

He spent too much time thinking about it, and Nat was nearly to the end of the course.

 

_ Fuck it _ .

 

Clint wasn’t sure how he could screw up  _ more _ than he already had, so…

 

He let the arrow fly, and then climbed down from his perch and set off for the end of the Trench.

 

Nat was waiting for him, arms crossed, leaning against the wall that usually had the final target of the Run mounted in the center of it.

 

“Well?” he asked as he approached. “Did I pass your test?”

 

She looked thoroughly unimpressed with his attitude.

 

Clint looked at her right forearm, eyes tracing over the shallow cut that was the only evidence of the arrow he had shot. An inch one way or the other - a second slower or faster - and the arrow would have gone through her arm. Not life-threatening. Not even career-ending.

 

“You tell me,” she said.

 

“Ugh, not another- Look, Coulson already did the Yoda thing with me earlier today. And Brown tried it on me the other day. Just. Please. I’m too stupid for this. Just- please just tell me whatever I need to do to unfuck this, and I’ll do it.”

 

“You don’t have to do anything, Clint.”

 

“Really? I ditch you in the middle of  _ Georgia _ for a week, and then just come back, and we’re cool?”

 

Nat shrugged, but she didn’t  _ say _ anything, and Clint for once couldn’t read her expressionless face.

 

“Nat.”

 

“You left me. That’s nothing new, Clint. You and I have been playing this game for a long time.”

 

“Yeah, but it- it’s not like it was before, Nat.”

 

_ Before _ , Clint and Nat had always gone their separate ways because she was returning to her KGB handlers and he was returning to SHIELD.  _ This  _ time, Clint had just straight-up abandoned her. With the STRIKE team that had been sent to kill her.

 

Granted, he hadn’t known  _ that _ fun fact until Brown had tracked him down in Iowa, but still. It made his gut churn just a little more.

 

“So what’s it like now, then?” she asked. And there was a tone to her voice - not quite vulnerable, but nowhere near the sarcastic edge she usually took when she was forced to ask something she didn’t know the answer to.

 

It was a fair and yet damn near impossible question.

 

Clint leaned against the wall, close enough to her that if either of them shifted just an inch, they would be bumping shoulders.

 

“Fuck if I know, Nat,” he confessed. “I- Hell. I don’t know what I thought would happen.”

 

And he really, Clint realized now, hadn’t thought it through. Natasha had just stared up at him and told him to kill her, and even though that was  _ exactly _ what Clint had been sent to do, and even though he had been fully prepared to do it, he hadn’t been able to.

 

It had just felt so wrong. So mind-numbingly, incomprehensibly wrong. 

 

But now?

 

This sure as hell didn’t feel  _ right _ .

 

Clint sighed.

 

“If you want out, I’ll get you out, Nat. I’ve got some connections and-”

 

“Do you want out?” Her voice was sharp, that faint hint of maybe vulnerability completely gone now.

 

“There is no out for me.” Clint gave a huff of bitter laughter. “I’m in this until I’m dead, Nat. I- I’ve done too much shit. I’ve got too much blood on my hands. I’ll be doing this until the day I’m not quick enough to make it to another day.”

 

“SHIELD isn’t…” Natasha paused, clearly struggling to figure out what she wanted to say. “They aren’t  _ good _ .”

 

“Is anyone?”

 

“No. I don’t think so. But SHIELD isn’t… This isn’t the KGB. This isn’t the Red Room. To these people, I’m more than just a weapon. This training - it isn’t about making me into a better weapon. It’s about making me understand them. They want me to understand. They want me to question things.”

 

“Yeah. Fury’s kind of big on that. Agents who think for themselves.”

 

“It’s why he trusted you in Vienna. To him, you are more than a weapon. You’re a person.”

 

“Maybe,” Clint allowed.

 

“I want to be a person, Clint.” Nat said the words so softly that he almost thought he had imagined them. But the earnest look on her face made him realize she had in fact spoken them.

 

“Okay. Let’s do that, then.”

 

She stood up, pushing away from the wall in one smooth motion, and started to walk back through the Trench. The flares had gone out, and they walked in near-total darkness.

 

“I trust you,” she said as they neared the entrance.

 

“I don’t know if you should,” Clint had to say.

 

Natasha found his hand and laced their fingers together.

 

“It’s my choice.”

  
  


-o-

 

Something was wrong.

 

Something was-

 

Something was  _ crawling on his face and- _

 

Clint let out a  _ completely _ manly shout to warn the rest of the base of the attack. He shoved at the suffocating, stabbing mass on his face and rolled off of his bed, grabbing his bow, nocking an arrow on instinct, and loosing it before he leapt for Nat’s bed.

 

He tackled Nat, her hands reaching up for him even as he reached for her, so that they were rolling together and on their feet and sprinting out of the door of the barracks in a heartbeat.

 

To a dozen of their classmates standing there, cameras and video recorders held up, laughing and capturing the moment.

 

He and Nat automatically put their backs together, and she released his hand, preparing to fight if needed.

 

Rumlow moved to the front of the group, arms crossed over his broad, bare chest and a shit-eating grin on his face.

 

“What happened?” he asked. “We heard some girl screaming for help.” His eyes flicked to Nat’s diminutive form with a sneer. Clint was betting he was still taking it personally that Nat had wiped the floor with him in hand to hand two days ago.

 

“Clear the barracks,” Clint said to her in an undertone, using Russian even though he knew most of their classmates had some familiarity with the language.

 

She hesitated, but then melted away from him and returned to the building they had just vacated.

 

“Sure that wasn’t your sister asking me for more?” Clint responded to Rumlow.

 

The other agents acted predictably, laughing or muttering their own jibes.

 

Rumlow just lifted his eyebrows.

 

“Since she doesn’t have a dick for you to suck, I knew it wasn’t her.”

 

Some of the laughter faded at that, and Clint forced himself to smirk back.

 

“Well, she’s not the only one in your family missing a dick, so-”

 

Rumlow took a step towards him, and Clint took a step forwards as well.

 

Before it could escalate further, Nat was walking back towards them, carrying something.

 

It was a large, stuffed spider with articulated legs. Solid black, with the mark of a Black Widow. It was also impaled by an arrow, and Clint imagined she had had to pry it off the wall.

 

She threw the stuffed spider at Rumlow and handed the arrow to Clint.

 

“In the Red Room, only the toddlers were allowed to sleep with stuffed animals,” Nat said, her eyes meeting Rumlow’s and her voice innocent. “I didn’t realize American spies needed them so badly. You should be more careful with that, or next time we might not be able to return it in one piece.”

 

“Sweet dreams,” Clint smirked again, and shifted his bow and the arrow to one hand and propped his elbow on Nat’s shoulder. For once, she didn’t shrug him off.

 

“You too,  _ SHRIEK  _ Team Delta,” Rumlow growled.

 

Clint and Nat waited until the agents had dispersed before they returned to their barracks.

 

“Shriek? I didn’t shriek,” Clint muttered as he climbed back into his bunk.

 

“You did,” Nat sighed into the darkness. He heard the rustling of sheets as she got back into her own bed.

 

“No, I shouted. With manly vigor.”

 

“I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean. You shrieked.”

 

“Nat?”

 

“Clint?”

 

“You’re a traitor.”

 

“I thought you already knew that.”

 

-o-

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

 

 

It was hot and unpleasant, and it wasn’t even midday yet.

 

Natasha had worked in a lot of places she planned on never visiting again, and Georgia was now definitely on that list. The country already had been. Now the state was too.

 

It was humid, in addition to the heat, and the air felt like some kind of soup that her body absolutely had no interest in.

 

The STRIKEAT trainees had been standing at attention for ten minutes now, and in Natasha’s opinion, it was eight minutes longer than it should have been.

 

Rumlow was selecting a team for his Kobayashi Maru run.

 

From a strictly objective point of view, Natasha could understand just what SHIELD saw in Rumlow, and what nearly half of the class also saw in him.

 

He was strong, competitive, had a biting sense of humor and - unless Clint was involved - a steady temper. But he was also a bully, and he was both a chauvinist and a misogynist, in addition to being a bigot, and just a bit too much of a narcissist to be able to accurately gauge his own weaknesses.

 

He wasn’t stupid, though, and the team he had assembled for the run reflected that.

 

Jack Rollins had been his first pick. The man wasn’t Rumlow’s biggest fan, but he also hated Clint, and had decided to hedge his bets by spending time with Natasha and also putting himself in the fringe of Rumlow’s followers. Rollins was smart, quick on his feet, able to take orders, and able to work with just about everyone.

 

Oscar Diaz was the second addition. Diaz was an excellent shot. Probably the best after Clint, so Natasha knew what position Rumlow expected him to fill on the team.

 

Grier Jr. was the next choice, and for a moment, it threw Natasha. Grier Jr. didn’t care for Rumlow at  _ all _ . Natasha actually didn’t know who Grier Jr hated more, Clint or Rumlow. But, she realized, Grier Jr had also been on more Kobayashi Maru runs than anyone else. Even though the instructors changed the room and the variables each time, there were some similarities that were impossible to eradicate. Plus, Grier Jr knew that the mission would go to shit from the start - he wasn’t going to be stuck staring in helpless rage like some of the other trainees had during their runs.

 

Michael Price, a tall, lithe black man who stuck mostly to himself and had the highest assessment test scores after Natasha, was Rumlow’s fifth pick. 

 

And then he spent five minutes walking back and forth at the front of the parade ground and looking down the rows of trainees as if he had no idea who to pick to fill the last spot on his team.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Clint whined loudly from behind Natasha. “You suck at flirting, Rumlow. Just pick Olsen, and let’s move on. We all know you want a piece of him.”

 

Natasha wasn’t quite sure  _ why _ Clint had decided to start teasing Olsen - she was fairly certain the younger man hadn’t pissed Clint off, and was, by her estimates, about three or four years away from being able to admit to himself that he was bisexual. 

 

Olsen’s face flushed red, and he stammered something before looking down at the ground.

 

“Are you getting lazy in your old age? Going for the easy targets?” Natasha asked him in an undertone, her Russian cutting.

 

Clint snorted and leaned close, breath whispering against her ear.

 

“Hey, if you want me to back off your boy, just say so.”

 

“He’s not-”

 

“Romanoff.”

 

Natasha looked to the front and met Rumlow’s gaze.

 

“What?” The word was out before she could really stop herself, and it sounded incredibly combative.

 

Clint laughed, and then did a terrible job of covering it by coughing.

 

“I just picked you. If you can tear yourself away from your girlfriend for five minutes.”

 

“I dunno, she was going to paint my nails later,” Clint drawled. 

 

“Don’t worry, this won’t take long,” she assured Clint, before stepping out of formation and joining the rest of Rumlow’s team.

 

She arched an eyebrow at him, and he smirked down at her.

 

“Time to see what you’re really made of,” he said.

 

-o-

 

Rumlow immediately tasked Diaz with finding a perch and getting eyes and sights on the situation inside the bank.

 

Price and Rollins each took a side scouting the perimeter and trying to assess threats.

 

Grier Jr. got shot in the face as soon as he stepped out of cover to attempt to locate the possible bomb.

 

Which gave Natasha and Rumlow a few precious minutes of solitude.

 

She had him pinned to the nearest wall, one knife against his throat and another poised at his dick, before he even realized what was happening.

 

“What the fuck are you doing, you crazy bitch?” he demanded. His eyes were wide, and his face pale.

 

Natasha was fairly certain it was the first moment in Rumlow’s entire life that he was forced to acknowledge his own mortality.

 

“I think you and I need to have a little chat.”

 

“Right  _ now _ ?”

 

“Yes. Right now.” She pressed the knife more firmly into his throat when he shifted against her. She felt it break the skin, and watched a bead of red form. She arched an eyebrow at him.

 

“What the fuck do you want to  _ chat _ about?”

 

“I’m not going anywhere. Neither is Clint. So you need to accept that or drop out.”

 

“I’m not dropping out of shit. And if your girlfriend sent you to fight his battles for him then-”

 

“Clint can fight his own battles. But you are starting to bore me. And I don’t handle boredom well. For the time being, you and I are on the same side. You need to remember that, or I’ll have to forget it too.”

 

“Are you threatening me?”

 

“I’m chatting with you. And I’m reminding you that until a few months ago, I was the agent sent to kill SHIELD agents like you and everyone around us. Tell me, would you prefer I become that agent again? Or do you want me to finish my STRIKEAT training?”

 

They stared at each other for a long, tense moment.

 

“Put away your fucking knives. We need to finish this exercise, Romanoff. And those aren’t part of the regulation tac gear.”

 

It was as close to a truce as she was likely to get, and Natasha was willing to accept it. For now.

 

She put away the knives and picked up her sidearm instead.

 

“You take right, I’ll take left. We go on three,” Rumlow instructed her.

 

Natasha nodded and got into position.

 

“Three.”

 

“Two.”

 

“One.”

 

Price and Rollins had been ambushed by the bad guys while they were chatting, and were now dead as well. Diaz had been shot down from his position up above.

 

Together, Natasha and Rumlow took out ten threats before the bomb went off and killed everyone.

 

They failed, but they shared the highest score that had ever been achieved on the exercise to-date.

 

-o-

 

It couldn’t have been later than 0300 when the lights were abruptly flicked on in the barracks.

 

Natasha woke up even before that. She had tightened the top hinge on the door enough that the metal rubbed together now when it moved, and the slight sound had given her a three-second head start on waking up, rolling off of her bed, and reaching for the gun that she wasn’t supposed to have.

 

One of the guns she wasn’t supposed to have.

 

Clint, however, woke up with the lights, flailing wildly as he rolled off of his bed as well.

 

From their positions on the floor, with their beds as cover, all Natasha could clearly make out were a single pair of pristinely-polished black boots.

 

Definitely an instructor, then, and not someone who put those boots to use.

 

She slid the gun back into the webbing under her mattress and rose to her feet. Beside her, Clint did the same.

 

Agent Brown regarded the pair of them with something close to amusement.

 

“Get dressed in these, and report to the parade ground in five minutes.” He tossed a plastic bag onto Natasha’s bed, and another onto Clint’s.

 

“Listen, we need to work on your ‘waking people up in the middle of the night’ skills, Brown,” Clint griped. “No coffee, no blowjobs, just- shitty gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Ugh. We’re going to look like we escaped from a fucking prison. What are these- oh. That time already?”

 

Clint stopped talking as he held up the shapeless gray sweats, and Brown smirked at him.

 

“Five minutes,” Brown repeated, and then saw himself out.

 

“You ready for this?” Clint asked Natasha as they dressed.

 

Her sweatshirt was comically large on her, and even pulling the drawstring on the waist of the sweatpants as tightly as she could, they still rode low on her hips. She grimaced. This was not a convenient outfit for fighting in.

 

“Recover and Return?” Natasha guessed, and Clint nodded. She shrugged. “It’s no different than anything else I’ve ever done.”

 

Clint grinned and ruffled her hair until she shoved him away.

 

“Sure. But now you’re doing it for S.H.I.E.L.D. ‘S totally different.”

 

“I don’t see how,” Natasha muttered as she followed him out to the parade ground.

 

The rest of the class was assembling, all looking somewhere between exhausted and anxious, and Natasha couldn’t deny the slight curl of excitement in her belly.

 

She had been doing things like this for as long as she could remember - quite literally - but somehow, this  _ did _ feel different. She wasn’t sure how or why, but she was looking forward to this exercise in a way she had never looked forward to her Red Room training.

 

“Class. Congratulations on making it three-quarters of the way through your training. Today, we embark on one of the most difficult and most important exercises you will undergo during your STRIKEAT.” Brown and the other trainers looked fresh and smug in the chill morning air. “The Recover and Return exercise will test each of you in key areas: STRIKE teams are composed of individuals who are masters of combat, intelligence and tactics. You will need to employ all of these skills to succeed in this exercise. Each of you will be taken from this location and dropped in a secure site somewhere in the United States. You will have seventy-two hours to make it back to base with as much cash as you can. You will need to complete this exercise while in deep cover - no one you encounter can know that you are a SHIELD agent. If you are arrested, you fail the exercise. If you are killed, you fail the exercise. If you end up on any news coverage, you fail the exercise. This is your chance to impress us with your resourcefulness. Are there any questions?”

 

There were none. As soon as Brown had said  _ why _ they had all been dragged from their beds at the ungodly hour, every single agent had stood at attention, eyes bright and breathing rapid. Everyone had been talking about this exercise since the first day Natasha had arrived.

 

Legends were built around the R&R exercise. Apparently, Hill, who had been dropped off in Idaho, of all places, showed up back at Fort Benning less than twenty-four hours later with three million dollars and the leader of some human trafficking ring dead and his organization being rounded up after an anonymous tip to the FBI. Coulson, it was rumored, had returned with only minutes to spare on his seventy-two hour clock, covered in bruises, and his exercise debriefing had been immediately classified and no one spoke of it except in hushed whispers. Brown, Natasha had learned after listening to gossip and then hacking into records, had returned with a million dollars, after assisting a fellow agent who had run into trouble and miraculously Brown had been on-hand to help them out.

 

“Alright, get your asses to the vans, and let’s ship you off somewhere fun.” Brown smirked at them, shaking his head when the agents practically tripped over themselves in their rush to get to the vans.

 

“Hey, Nat,” Clint tugged on her hand, pulling her back for a moment.

 

She lifted her eyebrows at him, and he grinned at her.

 

“Tag,” he said, and tapped a finger against her sternum, “you’re it.”

 

It was the closest he had ever come to telling her to be safe.

 

“Watch your six,” she instructed. “I won’t be there to keep you out of trouble.”

 

“Pshft.” Clint waved a negligent hand. “Trouble? Me?”

 

-o-

 

Natasha kept her eyes closed, and her breathing shallow and even.

 

She had no idea where she was and-

 

She struggled to remember the last thing that had happened to her. She had been on a plane, and then- and then nothing.

 

They must have drugged her, and if she was experiencing anterograde amnesia, it had probably been Midazolam or some other anesthetic sedative.

 

She had experienced similar treatment before, during her time in the Red Room.

 

Slowly, Natasha opened her eyes.

 

All she saw was darkness, and she could sense just how confined of a space she was in. Small, tight and dark, with very poor air circulation.

 

Gingerly, she reached out with her feet and encountered something solid. Lifting her hands, Natasha came into contact with cold metal. She ran her hands along the surface, feeling a curve and following it down.

 

Natasha was fairly confident that she was in the trunk of a car, and a bit of experimental wiggling further confirmed that suspicion when her surroundings bounced slightly in response.

 

The real question was, what was on the other  _ side _ of the trunk?

 

She scooted as close to the trunk closure as possible, and tried to see or smell anything on the other side. Nothing, except for a faint hint of gasoline. She also couldn’t hear anything, and she sincerely hoped that meant that she was alone.

 

Natasha curled onto her side and tried to dig under the trunk mat to see if there were any tools she could use.

 

Not surprisingly, her search came up empty. The only things in the trunk appeared to be her and a candy bar wrapper.

 

She tried to kick the trunk lid, aiming for the latch in hopes of breaking it. The trunk was small enough that she couldn’t quite get the right angle to apply enough force, though.

 

So she rolled in the other direction and started to kick at the back seats separating the trunk from the rest of the car.

 

It took her longer than she would have liked, which she attributed to the drugs still in her system, but she managed to kick the back seat down, and then cautiously crawled into the car.

 

Or what had once been a car.

 

The front was missing, and as Natasha crawled onto the backseat, she fell-

 

And fell.

 

And  _ fell _ .

 

Sharp metal stabbed at her, and she curled her arms around her face to protect herself, too afraid to try to stop her forward motion.

 

When she finally came to a stop, Natasha gasped in pain.

 

She hurt everywhere. 

 

Wincing, she opened her eyes and looked around herself.

 

She was in a junkyard, and it looked like she had been in the trunk of a car precariously perched on several other cars. She was lucky to be alive, she realized, as she looked at the path she had just taken.

 

She could have broken her neck, or had a lung punctured, or her liver or-

 

Natasha shut down that line of thought. She drew in a deep, steadying breath, and then another and another, until she could focus on the pain in her body.

 

Gingerly, she rose to her feet. Nothing felt broken, which was good, but her gray sweatpants were already stained with blood and dirt, and she was confident her face was in just as poor shape as the rest of her.

 

Well, she had hoped this would be a challenge. It looked like, for once, she had gotten what she wished for.

 

-o-

 

Natasha walked seven miles before she found a motel. She had no idea where she was, except that it was clearly in the middle of nowhere, and she estimated it to be almost midday when she saw a sign for  _ The Best Western _ .

 

She went around to the back of the main wing of hotel rooms, and had to break into five of them before she finally found one that was both currently empty but also occupied by a woman.

 

After bolting the door to the room, Natasha rifled through the woman’s belongings, finding a folder with directions, a wedding invitation, a wrapped present addressed to  _ Bill and Linda, _ and several changes of clothing - including a truly hideous tangerine cocktail dress. 

 

She also found a planner, and sighed in relief when she found the day’s date and a full list of events that would, hopefully, keep  _ Karen _ out for at least another few hours.

 

Natasha showered, turned on the television in the room, and set about finding something to wear.

 

According to the wedding invitation, Natasha was in Paola, Kansas, and according to the television, it was something like thirteen hours since she had been woken up in the barracks at Fort Benning.

 

Whoever Karen was, she was a few sizes bigger than Natasha, and favored bright, floral colors. Natasha finally settled on a layered pink skirt, a white t-shirt, denim jacket, flip-flops, and the least offensive of Karen’s  _ seven _ floral print purses.

 

And then the door rattled.

 

Natasha didn’t bother to turn off the television or cover her tracks - there was no real way to hide that she had been in the room - but she did wipe down the television remote and the hair dryer in the bathroom before climbing back out of the window in the back of the hotel room and walking away as quickly and purposefully as she could without running.

 

It was another five miles before she reached downtown Paola.

 

-o-

 

Natasha had been to Chicago twice before. Last year, she had been tasked with eliminating the CEO of a digital technology company who didn’t want to work with the new Russian government on their cyber security projects. His successor had been far more accomodating.

 

She had been fourteen the first time she came to Chicago, and that had been on a mission that she didn’t let herself think about. She had eliminated the target and she had survived, and that was all there was to it.

 

The KGB had maintained a number of safe-houses in the city and surrounding suburbs. It was ideally situated to use the Great Lakes to move people and cargo to Canada for easy extraction. She knew of five safe-houses that had been active as late as six months ago.

 

She wondered…

 

The first one she went to had been gutted, the safe room in the basement plastered over and, once she opened it, completely emptied. She looked up the property, and discovered that it had recently been purchased by a family of three. Which, by itself, didn’t mean too much. But Natasha was willing to bet that the house had been dumped.

 

The next safehouse had, according to an elderly woman who lived across the street, burned down four months ago. No one had died, since the owners had been out of town.

 

The third safehouse was, like half of the block, being bulldozed down to make way for new high-rise condos.

 

The fourth safehouse- 

 

Was definitely not abandoned, if the man reaching for a gun the moment he opened the door and saw Natasha on the porch was any indicator.

 

The fight was quick and brutal, the front hall of the house an immediate wreckage of furniture, shattered photographs, and broken porcelain knick-knacks. He managed to land a few hits, splitting Natasha’s lip and re-opening the cut on her cheek that had  _ just _ started to heal after her fall in the junkyard.

 

But eventually, Natasha wrestled his gun away and shot him in the gut with it, holding him against her, hand over his mouth, while he bled out and his struggles grew weaker and weaker, until finally he stopped moving.

 

He had at least a hundred pounds on her, and it was an effort to shove his body away from her, and then she remained sitting in the hall, back against the wall, struggling to catch her breath for several minutes before she forced herself to get back up.

 

There was cash in the safe upstairs, weapons and more cash, drugs and phones in the downstairs panic room.

 

She took the cash and weapons, and then burned the house down.

 

Watching from a safe distance, she made sure the fire didn’t come too close to the neighboring houses. Someone eventually called the fire department, but even before they arrived on the scene, a black sedan stopped three houses down, and two men got out of the car.

 

They were vaguely familiar, and Natasha briefly debated whether or not to follow them when they got back in their car and drove off. 

 

In the end, she decided not to.

 

It was outside her current mission parameters and…

 

And she didn’t think she was ready to go down wherever that road took her. Not yet.

 

The things she had done for the KGB had been, if not her choice, then her calling. She had believed in what she was doing, and those beliefs might have been the product of indoctrination, and mental and physical manipulation and conditioning, but there was still too much of Natasha that wasn’t yet  _ hers _ . 

 

So she went to the fifth safe house and found it unsurprisingly empty, safes hastily cleared out and documents still smoldering in the fireplace, and a cup of lukewarm coffee abandoned on a side table.

 

She didn’t bother to torch the house - it was burned either way.

 

-o-

 

Natasha checked into a hotel near the waterfront, using the credit card of a businessman she had pick-pocketed on her way downtown to reserve the room, and then insisting on paying cash up front for three nights, even though she had no intention of staying more than the one night.

 

Once safely ensconced in the hotel room, Natasha counted out her remaining cash and took an inventory of her weapons.

 

Two Beretta M9s and six thousand dollars and a few crumpled singles in cash.

 

Now she just needed to figure out how to leverage her resources in order to exponentially increase her finances.

 

The first stop was new clothes. And a new purse.

 

-o-

 

It was laughable to consider how many doors were opened for Natasha when she had on a six hundred dollar metallic dress, plunging neckline glittering and the hem just barely brushing the tops of her thighs, as she sauntered into the VIP lounge of a club on her four-inch snakeskin heels.

 

Laughable when she thought about how impossible it would have been to get in here in her costume six hours ago. 

 

Now, though, Natasha was able to flirt her way into three untouched free martinis, able to dance with well-dressed men and take advantage of their overly handsy approach to her to reciprocate and alleviate them of their wallets.

 

She went to one club and then another and then another.

 

But she wasn’t going to win this exercise by pickpocketing. She needed to find bigger game. 

 

Still, at the end of the night, she had more than ten-thousand dollars, two cellphones and the keys to a yacht. 

 

Natasha went to sleep with a Beretta in hand, and wondered what trouble Clint had managed to get himself into without her there to keep him safe.

 

-o-

 

She moved to a new hotel the next day, one that didn’t require a credit card for a reservation, and changed into a pink velour tracksuit, stilettos, and straightened her hair before adding heavy makeup to her face.

 

The  _ bratva _ was out, because she knew the KGB maintained links with the organized Russian crime syndicates in the United States, and that seemed like the quickest way to get killed. But the mafia kept a line of relative neutrality in international politics, and Natasha had done a favor for The Outfit the last time she was in Chicago.

 

Of course, the favor had been not killing Albert Vena’s cousin when he didn’t take  _ no _ for an answer without Natasha having to add force to the equation. The cousin, Nick Vena, had been stupid enough to push the issue even with a broken wrist. After Natasha took down two enforcers, Albert Vena had been brought into the picture. He was the street boss of The Outfit, rumored to be the most dangerous man in Chicago, and Natasha’s supervisors had been  _ very _ clear that she was to stay as far away from The Outfit, and from Albert Vena in particular, as she could. Instead, she had ended up shoved to her knees at his side while he was in the middle of a pedicure, and had had to talk her way out of a back-alley execution.

 

She was lucky, because Nick was Albert’s sister’s kid, and Albert hated him. She was lucky, because Albert liked redheads. She was lucky, because the two enforcers she had taken out had been implicated in some rumblings about a power grab. She was lucky, because Nick Vena had been tasked with intimidating some Columbian drug dealers operating in Grand Avenue, and hadn’t managed to do it before Natasha put him out of commission. 

 

So Albert Vena promised Natasha that it would all be water under the bridge if she just  _ worked her magic _ on his South American friends. 

 

She had done so well at the task that Albert had kissed her on the forehead and offered to castrate Nick if Natasha wanted to consider sticking around.

 

Natasha had declined the offer as politely as possible, and hadn’t reported the incident to her handlers when she returned to Moscow for her debriefing two weeks later.

 

She only hoped that Albert Vena still liked redheads.

 

-o-

 

Natasha spent the better part of the day traipsing around Grand Avenue and 26th Street, dropping hints about being an  _ old friend _ to the proprietors of restaurants, bakeries, liquor stores, cobblers and dry cleaners, until finally, when she was sitting on a bench in Smith Park eating a slice of pizza and Albert Vena himself sat down beside her.

 

There were at least six bodyguards floating around him, not a single one making even a token attempt to look innocuous. They were muscle, and they were there to intimidate.

 

Natasha smiled at Albert, and he smiled back.

 

“Ah, my little spider, I wondered when you would come back to me.” Albert put his arm across the back of the bench, fingers just barely brushing Natasha’s shoulder.

 

“I’m only in town for a brief visit,” Natasha told him.

 

“Business or pleasure?” he asked with a wink. 

 

Natasha laughed and leaned back against the bench, settling into his casual touch.

 

“My business is always a pleasure,” she replied, and he laughed with her.

 

“So, a beautiful woman has been dropping hints in my territory all day, practically begging to meet with me - and when I find out this beautiful woman is a  _ redhead, _ I knew it was you. But what I didn’t know, what I still don’t know,” Albert’s smile faded, and his hand gripped Natasha’s shoulder, “is why you are so desperate to see  _ me _ , hm? Everyone knows the KGB lost their favorite widowmaker, but no one knows why, or who she’s working for  _ now _ .”

 

Natasha held herself still, not fighting against the fingers digging painfully into her arm, even though Albert had somehow managed to find one of the more painful bruises from her tumble yesterday.

 

“I decided to go freelance,” she said simply. “I was tired of being told what to do. And I didn’t like the retirement package they were offering.”

 

Albert was startled into another laugh, and he let go of Natasha’s shoulder after giving it another brutal squeeze.

 

“You’ve been missing for months,” he said. “The  _ bratva _ insisted you were dead.”

 

“Maybe I’m just a ghost,” Natasha smirked.

 

“So why would a ghost want to see me, hm?”

 

“I need money. A lot of money. As quickly as I can get my hands on it.”

 

Albert raised his eyebrows, and then laughed.

 

“Oh, my little spider, who have you pissed off?”

 

“No one yet. Aside from the KGB.”

 

“Oh, just them?” Albert’s smile was sharp, and he arched an eyebrow at her. “Who are you looking to add to that list?”

 

Natasha arched an eyebrow in response.

 

“Well, if the  _ bratva _ thinks I’m dead, perhaps I should enlighten them?”

 

Albert was silent and thoughtful for a long moment.

 

“I think I might have something that could use your… special touch. Do you remember the club where you made Nick fall in love with you?”

 

“Is that how he likes to remember it?”

 

“Be there tonight at eleven.”

 

“Albert, I need the money within twenty-four hours.”

 

“Then you had better complete the job within twenty-four hours,” he said.

 

Natasha nodded, and remained sitting on the bench while Albert stood up.

 

His retinue followed him as he walked out of the park, and Natasha waited another thirty minutes before she left the park as well.

 

After forty-five minutes of doubling back on her tracks and taking back alleys and emergency exits out of buildings, she was reasonably confident she had lost whatever tails Albert or anyone else had seen fit to put on her, and she returned to her hotel room to wait.

 

-o-

 

The club where Natasha had met Nick last year was almost on the Southside, almost out of The Outfit’s jurisdiction, and it was in an old warehouse that had been converted into a handful of unsavory businesses and the club itself. 

 

She could hear the music from the street as she approached, the bass so loud she felt it in her pulse. She had changed again, this time into tight black pants and a slip of red fabric that might generously be called a top, except for the fact that Natasha was fully confident it barely qualified as a  _ scarf _ . She had gone for heeled boots tonight, because she wasn’t sure what or when Albert’s job was, but she wanted to be prepared, and after having to walk five miles in flip-flops the day before, Natasha had a new and profound appreciation for functional footwear.

 

She was waved through by the bouncer after telling him that she was there to see Albert about a job, and she spent the better part of half an hour surveying the crowd inside the club, fending off overly-interested men and fighting down a growing sense of unease.

 

Natasha didn’t know all that much about the way The Outfit operated, but to her knowledge, they generally kept their front businesses separate from their illegal activities. Asking Natasha to the club had to be a checkpoint, a meeting place before they escorted her to wherever Albert really wanted to talk.

 

But if that was the case, there were any number of other locations he could have chosen. Locations that weren’t this crowded, or this loud, or this dark, or this-

 

Hands reached for her from both sides and from behind at the same time.

 

Natasha tried to twist free, tried to lash out with her feet and hands, but she was immediately and painfully restrained.

 

She opened her mouth to scream-

 

Something heavy and  _ hard _ impacted with the side of her head, and Natasha fell into darkness.

 

-o-

 

“Ah, Natalia. So good of you to join us.”

 

Natasha blinked awake slowly. Her head was throbbing, her hands and feet were taped to a chair, and she found herself staring into a face she had thought to never see again.

 

Colonel Irma Klausvichnova was one of the KGB’s top intelligence officers, with a reputation for cold-blooded ruthlessness that had impressed even Natasha’s instructors at the Red Room. She was one of the agents who had acted as Natasha’s handlers during the eight years that she had been an agent for the KGB, and she was the handler that Natasha had always feared the most. 

 

It was impossible to disappoint Klausvichnova - she simply didn’t allow it. Anyone who did anything less than impress her on a mission was never heard from again.

 

_ Natalia _ . 

 

It had only been a few months since someone had called her by that name, but already it felt like a lifetime ago. 

 

Natasha felt something cold and slick work its way up her throat.

 

“Colonel,” she said in Russian.

 

Klausvichnova waved a hand.

 

“No, no. I’ve retired from the KGB, Natalia.”

 

That was somehow even more terrifying to contemplate. If that was the truth - what was she doing  _ here, _ and what did she want with  _ Natasha _ ?

 

“I didn’t realize,” she said.

 

“Yes, well, you’ve been busy, haven’t you? Playing soldier for the Americans. I thought the next time I would see you would be in a body bag or on trial, Natalia. And yet, here you are. It’s almost like old times.”

 

Ironically, except for the restraints, it  _ was _ rather like old times. Natasha’s fear of Klausvichnova was as familiar as their positions - each sitting in a chair, a table separating them, in a too-bright room with no windows and only one obvious escape through the door behind Klausvichnova.

 

“It’s disappointing to know that I overestimated you, Natalia.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Of all of our girls, you were the best. The shining example. And you threw it all away for, what - a pretty face?”

 

Natasha stared, unable to figure out what Klausvichnova was talking about for a moment. 

 

She let out a surprised, nearly hysterical burst of laughter when she made the connection.

 

“You- you think I defected because I  _ like _ him?”

 

Klausvichnova did not look amused, or pleased in any way at the derision in Natasha’s voice. The steel in her brown eyes had Natasha swallowing and sitting up straighter. She had, after all, been raised on the stories of what the colonel had done to survive and ensure the supremacy of Mother Russia.

 

“Do enlighten me then, Natalia.”

 

“I no longer have to explain my actions to you, Colonel.”

 

“Ah, there’s the girl I remember. Defiant to the last, hm?”

 

Klausvichnova rose from her seat and crossed to Natasha’s side of the table. She sat down on the edge and folded her arms over her chest.

 

She had been a hero to Natasha, once. Klausvichnova had been sixteen when she was commissioned as an intelligence officer by the KGB, and she had spent the first ten years of her career stationed in East Berlin killing western agent after western agent, and leaving their bodies in grotesque, lurid positions to be discovered later by their enemies.

 

She had come to the Red Room Academy once, while Natasha had still been a student, and she had spent the day observing their classes, critiquing their work, and at the end of the day, she had selected one of the upper-year students, Marina Korkova, and shot her in the stomach.

 

_ Remember, no matter how good you are, how well trained you are, how resourceful you are, how valuable you may be - there is always someone better than you _ .

 

She had said those words to the stunned girls watching the blood seep from their classmate’s body. No one moved to help her. No one moved at all.

 

Natasha had given up on heroes that day.

 

“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” Natasha asked.

 

Klausvichnova smiled, a tight, sharp expression that pinched her features unnaturally.

 

“Because you might still be useful to me. As I said, I’ve retired from the KGB. I now work as a… consultant for an international organization that is currently recruiting. Tell me why you turned your back on Russia, Natalia, and I’ll tell you if there is room in our organization for you.”

 

There was no way Natasha was walking out of this room unless Klausvichnova let her. Natasha wasn’t naive enough to think that, even if she could somehow overpower the other woman from her current position taped to a chair, there weren’t likely reinforcements just outside of the door. 

 

Natasha sighed and forced herself to meet the woman’s eyes.

 

“The future,” she finally said.

 

Klausvichnova lifted her eyebrows, the expression conveying absolutely nothing as to her level of interest in what Natasha was saying.

 

“There is no future with the KGB. They are an instrument of the past, and our -  _ their _ \- leaders don’t have the vision to adapt. I was trained to survive, and that’s what I intend to do. I saw the chance to guarantee my survival, and I took it.”

 

Klahsvichnova was silent, lips pursed and brown eyes impenetrable.

 

“And yet, here you are. Tell me, Natalia, do you still want to survive?”

 

Natasha met her eyes.

 

“Yes.”

 

The woman’s smile was familiar this time, wide and cold as winter in Salekhard.

 

“Let’s see if you can convince me, hm?”

 

-o-

 

After three hours, Natasha’s throat was raw, her body ached, and she couldn’t stop shaking.

 

Klausvichnova had made Natasha sit in on an interrogation once, had split her attention between the victim she was waterboarding and Natasha, explaining in great detail why she did what she did, and what results her actions would achieve, while the man continually submerged in frigid water cried and begged and, eventually, told Klausvichnova everything she wanted to know.

 

Natasha was finally given a break from being tortured, in that Klausvichnova stepped away to sleep and left one of her subordinates in charge of waking Natasha up every time she started to drift off.

 

She wasn’t sure how much time passed before Klausvichnova returned - it could have been minutes or hours - but when she did step back into the room where Natasha was huddled in a corner, still shivering, she looked refreshed and smug.

 

Just like she had when telling the girls her  _ lesson _ after she had shot Marina.

 

“Natalia, a few of your new friends have been bothering me for some time now. I wonder, if you take care of them for me, it would certainly go a long way towards convincing me that your future aligns with my own.”

 

“Of course,” Natasha responded without hesitation.

 

Klausvichnova nodded, and gestured to the man who had been standing guard over Natasha. 

 

“Get her some new clothes. Something that doesn’t make her look like such an obvious prostitute.”

 

The man left, and Klausvichnova sat down in the chair she had occupied before.

 

“There are two FBI agents who have been tasked with collecting intelligence on my movements and activities. I want you to kill them, and I want you to make their deaths a message to the Americans that you no longer work for them, do you understand me?”

 

Natasha nodded.

 

“Good. If you fail me, Natalia, I will make you watch as I take your precious Hawkeye apart, piece by piece. He’s in Las Vegas right now, isn’t he? My organization would certainly gain quite the reputation if we eliminated  _ both _ Hawkeye and the Black Widow, wouldn’t we? Or do you think you can do better working for us?”

 

“You know I can, or you wouldn’t have kept me alive this long,” Natasha pointed out.

 

Klausvichnova laughed and patted Natasha’s face, the gesture not quite a slap, but still hard enough to sting.

 

“Very good, Natalia. Very good.”

 

-o-

 

Klausvichnova assigned two keepers to Natasha, large men who nevertheless moved with the kind of grace that only professional dancers and assassins seemed capable of. She wasn’t positive, but she was willing to bet that they had been among the men who had taken her at the club.

 

Sergei and Ivan. They didn’t speak to her, and she didn’t speak to them.

 

They simply shadowed her as she tracked down the base of operations that the two FBI agents had been using. They stood by, silent and impassive, as she murdered the two men and carved the Widow’s mark into their necks before taking all of the intel they had accumulated and their weapons. Sergei and Ivan took everything from her, including her own weapons, and escorted her back to Klausvichnova’s headquarters in the back of a dry cleaning facility.

 

They taped her to the chair again and turned off the lights in the room, leaving her alone with the vivid memory of her most recent victims’ expressions of horror for company.

 

-o-

 

Klausvichnova showed her the hacked emails that detailed the crime scene, the communication between the FBI and the CIA over the Black Widow, her photograph and name referenced as an enemy threat of the highest priority. 

 

“Now that you’ve convinced me, I believe you need to be reconditioned, Natalia. You will be taken to one of our facilities by Sergei and Ivan. And I will be getting routine reports of your progress, Natalia. If you disappoint me again, I will eliminate Hawkeye. Do you understand me?”

 

“Yes, Colonel.”

 

Klausvichnova didn’t bother to correct her.

 

-o-

 

Natasha was bundled into the backseat of a sedan, hands and feet secured with zip ties, while Ivan drove and Sergei rode in the front seat with him.

 

They seemed perfectly content to ignore her unless she moved even an inch, which resulted in Sergei twisting back to look at her, gun aimed squarely at her chest.

 

After an hour of silence, Ivan turned on the radio.

 

“... _ news. This is a Breaking News event. Just hours ago, the Monte Carlo casino in Las Vegas was robbed by a man dressed in a Captain America costume. The man, who was captured on security cameras as he escaped from casino security, is reported to have taken several million dollars from the casino vault. After fleeing the scene, Captain America ran down the Las Vegas Strip, and was caught on camera giving away the stolen money to tourists as he continued to flee from security and the Las Vegas Police Department. Currently, there is a nationwide manhunt for Captain America, and the authorities are offering a reward for any information that might lead to his arrest.” _

 

She knew, without even seeing a single photograph or video, that it had to have been Clint.

 

Who  _ else _ would dress as Captain America, rob a casino, and give away all of the money?

 

Clint.

 

_ Clint _ .

 

She realized that if she didn’t return on time, he would come after her. And he would get himself killed.

 

Natasha looked at the clock on the radio console.

 

It was 2:15 Central Time, which meant she had something like eighteen hours to make it back to Fort Benning before Clint did something even  _ more _ stupid than dress up like Captain America and rob a casino.

 

They stopped just past Indianapolis to put gas in the car, and Natasha asked to use the bathroom.

 

Sergei and Ivan exchanged some kind of silent communication that resulted in the zip ties around her feet being cut and Sergei hauling her into the bathroom and staring at her while she used the toilet.

 

She glared back at him the entire time, taking as long as she dared to wash and dry her hands before she let him haul her back out. The cashier didn’t even spare them a glance.

 

They didn’t bother to put the zip ties back on her feet, and Natasha settled herself on the passenger side of the backseat without complaint.

 

Ivan continued to drive, switching between radio stations with annoying frequency, and after a few hours, Sergei started to doze and Ivan forgot to keep waking him up.

 

It was dusk, and they were somewhere in Virginia when Natasha made her move.

 

She threw her arms around Sergei’s neck, and then  _ pushed _ against the back of his chair as hard as she could.

 

He woke with a gurgle of shock and pain, fingers scrabbling at her hands, and Ivan jerked the steering wheel hard to the left.

 

Natasha held fast, though, even as Sergei started to hit her arms and Ivan continued to weave erratically through traffic, until he pulled off the road and came to a screeching halt.

 

By that point, however, Sergei slumped unconscious in Natasha’s arms.

 

She wasn’t quick enough pulling away, though, and Ivan’s knife slashed along her left forearm, opening a deep gash from her wrist to her elbow that had Natasha shouting in pain.

 

She twisted away and lashed out with her feet, grateful for the heeled boots they had left on her, and caught him in the temple. He was only momentarily stunned, and then he was reaching for his gun and Natasha had to dive behind the driver’s seat to avoid being hit.

 

Ivan opened his door, and Natasha had to roll to the  _ other _ side of the car and scrabble for the door handle.

 

It was locked. 

 

_ Child locks _ .

 

Natasha cursed, and then ducked as Ivan shot through the windows at her.

 

She drew a deep breath and then launched herself into the front seat, onto Sergei’s lap, and hoped that Ivan at least paused before deciding to sacrifice his partner.

 

Natasha managed to open Sergei’s door just as Ivan decided the sacrifice was worth it.

 

She fell backwards onto the ground, Sergei’s body following her and jerking with the impact of two bullets.

 

She managed to pull his gun out, and resigned herself to laying as still as she could under the weight of his body, feeling his blood soak into her clothing. She tried to control her breathing so that she could listen-

 

Ivan was reloading his gun, was muttering to himself in low, frantic Russian, something that sounded like a prayer.

 

And then he was walking around the front of the car, steps careful and measured.

 

Natasha was just able to make out his feet under the undercarriage of the car, and she waited for him to step closer, waited for him to reach down to see if either she or Sergei was still alive.

 

And shot him three times - once in the head, twice in the chest.

 

He fell down onto the dirt beside them, and Natasha finally kicked free of Sergei’s body.

 

She drew in a deep, choking breath, and stared up at the dying sun.

 

-o-

 

“Agent Romanoff, give me one reason not to arrest you and put you on trial for treason right now.”

 

She didn’t know if any of the other agents had to sit through a debriefing when they returned from the R&R exercise. But then again, she didn’t know if any of the other agents had murdered two FBI agents. 

 

_ And a KGB agent. And whatever Ivan and Sergei had been. _

 

Klausvichnova had never even told Natasha  _ what _ organization she worked for, and Natasha felt that lack of intelligence as a brutal failure. 

 

She couldn’t protect Clint from an enemy that she didn’t know.

 

Phil Coulson looked tired, Natasha couldn’t help but think as the SHIELD agent sat across from her in a windowless room.

 

Her hands and feet were free, at least, and she had been given a cup of coffee and a change of clothes before being told to sit and wait. Four hours later, Coulson had walked into the room with a folder in one hand and a grim expression.

 

“I’m not a US citizen,” she pointed out.

 

Coulson glared at her for a long moment before flipping open the folder in his hands and throwing it on the table in front of her.

 

Natasha frowned in confusion as she looked down at the documents.

 

“What-”

 

“Congratulations, Natasha Romanoff. You’re a US citizen. Now, tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you.”

 

She swallowed hard and met his eyes again.

 

He wasn’t tired, she realized. He was  _ weary _ . He was disappointed. 

 

She wondered if Clint would look at her like that, or if his expression would be worse. She had never seen him look disappointed before - not truly, not at her.

 

The one person who cared about her, who believed she could do better, could be better. How would he react to the news that she had murdered two good men just to save her own life?

 

“Because I’m worth more to you alive and working for SHIELD than I am in prison.”

 

“So far, as a SHIELD agent, all you’ve done is murder FBI agents,” Coulson pointed out. “I don’t really see the value in that.”

 

“No,” she agreed, “neither do I.”

 

Coulson’s silence was oppressive, so heavy it felt like Natasha was suffocating.

 

“What do you want from me, anyway? You and Fury? When Clint brought me in - when Fury created STRIKE Team Delta - what was the goal? Why me? Why Barton?”

 

Coulson’s gaze was relentless, and Natasha forced herself to meet it without wavering.

 

“You and Agent Barton have a very… specific skill set. Neither of you are squeamish, and neither of you are used to failure. Director Fury, Agent Hill and myself organized STRIKE Team Delta as a tactical response team that would be more flexible, more efficient, and more effective than traditional STRIKE Teams. Delta missions range from exfiltration, intelligence gathering, escorts, covert ops - anything that requires a quick, strategic, surgical response.”

 

“And how is that different from other STRIKE Teams?”

 

“Because you and Agent Barton don’t blink when you’re told to kill for the sake of the mission. You and Agent Barton are willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary to complete the mission, aren’t you?”

 

Natasha swallowed hard.

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Tell me, Romanoff, where do you draw the line?”

 

“Sir?”

 

“The line, Romanoff, when your life is worth laying down instead of fighting to survive. Where do you draw that line? How many lives have to be at stake for you to realize that  _ they _ are worth more than  _ you _ ? Or do you even have that line?”

 

She had never been asked that question before, had never even had to  _ think _ about it. Not really. Except- 

 

Clint. 

 

Clint’s life meant more than hers. 

 

But she knew immediately that that wasn’t the answer that Coulson wanted from her, so Natasha tried to think, for the first time in her life, about her value as an asset when balanced against the safety of the greater good.

 

“I don’t believe  _ laying down _ is what you want from me, Agent Coulson. Not you, not Hill and not Director Fury. You don’t want me to lay down my life. You want me to fight until I can’t move, and even then, you want me to find the strength to take out one more enemy. You asked me, the day that Agent Barton brought me into custody, if I was willing to die for what I believed in, but you didn’t ask me  _ what  _ I believed in.”

 

“So what do you believe in, Romanoff?”

 

“I believe that I can do better, that I can do more good alive and fighting than I can with a bullet in my head and my enemies running free and unafraid. You want someone who won’t hesitate because of the potential casualties. You want someone who will do whatever is required to complete the mission. You want the Black Widow, Agent Coulson. All of you do. Even Agent Barton.”

 

Coulson continued to look at her, his dark gaze at once so similar and yet so very different from Klausvichnova’s. 

 

He suddenly stood up, the motion smooth, and he buttoned his suit jacket.

 

“I’ve got paperwork to file. Don’t murder anyone else before you finish your training, alright?”

 

-o-

 

Clint was waiting for her in the barracks, sitting on his bed wearing a  _ What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas _ t-shirt and jeans. He was reading a black book titled  _ Traditional Archery _ , and he looked so casual and comfortable that Natasha knew he was waiting for her.

 

He looked up at her entrance, still holding the book open on the page he had been looking at, and she couldn’t read his expression.

 

“You look like shit,” he finally said.

 

Natasha laughed, and then found, all at once and to her immense horror, that she was crying.

 

Clint threw aside the book and pulled her into his arms, wrapping himself around her and smoothing a hand through her hair, protecting her without any hesitation whatsoever.

 

“Clint, I- I killed-”

 

“I know, Tasha, I know.” Clint’s voice was low, empathetic without actually offering sympathy, and Natasha let herself cling to him.

 

“I know,” he repeated into her hair. “I know.”

 

-o-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the thanks, always, to Ro.

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I am SO new to this fandom. SO painfully new. I have fallen head over heels in love and wanted to play with these characters and in this sandox and I really appreciate you taking the time to see what I managed to cobble together.
> 
> I am not an MCU wonk, and I’m not a Marvel wonk either - I enjoy the things but I can’t claim to be crazy knowledgeable. I’m doing the best I can with research, but there are some things I’m willingly choosing to ignore - Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil, Avengers: Infinity War, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with any of those, but the story I want to tell diverges a lot from that canon.
> 
> This is a huge, sprawling, complicated fic that is overwhelmingly about the relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow. They are my BROTP of BROTPs and I love them dearly. There will be some romantic side relationships, and characters will pop in and out, but they are the main focus.
> 
> We will cover nearly 30 years in this fic:  
> Part 1 explores my take on Black Widow and Hawkeye coming into their own and their paths crossing  
> Part 2 is the birth of SHIELD’s STRIKE Team Delta  
> Part 3 is Black Widow and Hawkeye doing their Shield thing leading up to the events of Iron Man 2.  
> Part 4 is everything that happened between 2011-2014  
> Part 5 is entirely canon divergent, picking up after Captain America: The Winter Soldier and I will cherry pick who and what to include from existing canons.
> 
> This story is in five parts, and I’ve decided not to post any chapters from a part until the entire part is complete so, updates will hopefully be on the regular.
> 
> If I get things wrong, I’m totally happy to take helpful pointers. Seriously, any honest, beneficial critiques will be welcome. But just remember that I’m not claiming to know everything, or even really that much. I just want to tell a story.
> 
> I want to thank Kangofu_CB, whose fault it is that I’m diving headfirst into this fandom.
> 
> I also want to thank Ro, Luvsanime02, who is my unfailing support in all that I write. She’s a wonderful beta reader, an amazing friend, a talented writer and a great cheerleader. I’m so damn spoiled to have her and kind of in awe of how she manages to put up with me.
> 
> Also, lastly, I tried to pluck Marvel characters (in many verses) to use in this, but there are a few instances, two very notable, when I created original characters: Joe Brown and Katarina Martinez.
> 
> Thanks and enjoy!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[ART] The Smarter Half of Shriek Team Delta](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15755412) by [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB)




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